The palanquin jerks to a stop and is lowered to the ground. The door opens. Poppy reaches in a hand to help me out. What I see is more than my eyes can take in or absorb. So many people. And they’re doing… everything. I must be standing with my mouth agape, because Miss Zhao waves her hand in front of my face and says, “Your mother would have preferred that you keep your eyes on the ground. Please act properly to honor her. Now come. Follow me.”
She leads me through the bustle of the dock. With my eyes down, all I see are Miss Zhao’s flowing skirt, Yifeng’s black shoes, and the two sets of boots belonging to the bodyguards. Once on deck, we’re escorted to a room with four pallets on which to sleep. The room is also outfitted with a pitcher of water, a honeypot to do our business, and a bucket with a lid. The walls have no decoration, not even a window to look out of. The palanquin was hot and close, but this room feels worse.
The next six days and nights are miserable—far, far, far beyond what the soothing qualities of candied ginger can remedy. Poppy gets sick first, which is when Miss Zhao tells us the purpose of the bucket. I get sick next. Then the three of us take turns lifting the lid to the bucket. Only Yifeng remains unaffected.
Just before dawn on the seventh morning, the pitching lessens. Miss Zhao, who in recent hours has propped her forehead on the crook of her arm against the edge of the bucket, lifts her head and announces, “We’ve turned up the Yangzi. Soon we’ll veer onto the Huangpu to reach Shanghai.” A hint of a smile lifts her lips for the first time in days. “The city that abounds in everything.” Without asking a single question, I’m learning a lot about my father’s concubine. She clearly had a life before she entered our home. She has been as considerate of me on this journey as she has of her own son. And she seems to have respect for my mother.
Too fast to see much of anything, we’re escorted to a sampan. The bodyguards take our traveling bags to the shelter where we’re to spend the journey, but Miss Zhao doesn’t follow.
“How long will it take us to reach Wuxi?” she asks the boatman.
“If the wind gives us more strength than the current, then maybe a couple of days,” he answers.
Miss Zhao closes her eyes in response. I understand. I’m still unsteady from our ocean journey, and the bobbing of the sampan isn’t calming my stomach one bit. When the bodyguards emerge from the shelter, she sways over to them. They’re supposed to be protecting us, but they back away as though they’re being approached by a fox spirit.
“I don’t know that I’ll be able to stand more days in a windowless space,” she says to them in her melodious voice. Then she gestures to Yifeng and me. “And I don’t think they’ll be able to either. Please let us remain outside, where it will be more comfortable.”
The bodyguards deny her request, insisting that they need to protect us.
“Even if a farmer or another boatman glimpses us,” she replies, “in a moment we will have sailed past.”
“We don’t want to get in trouble,” one of the bodyguards says. “Prefect Tan—”
“Need never know,” she finishes. “We can keep this a secret between us.”
After a bit more back-and-forth, she settles an arrangement by placing coins in their hands. Poppy and I exchange glances. We aren’t supposed to like the concubine, but in this moment we’re both grateful to her. As one guard takes a position at the front of the sampan and the other stands at the rear with the boatman, Miss Zhao herds Yifeng, Poppy, and me to seats under a canopy. The boatman pushes us away from the dock. Now I can see everything. The buildings, the people, the activities on the shore all help to distract me from my nausea. After an hour or so, the boatman steers us onto the Wusong River, which is far smaller than the Huangpu. We’re still going against the current, but the shift in direction also means a shift in the wind. It comes from behind us now, and we glide over the smoother waters. The boatman maneuvers the oar rhythmically as we pass li upon li of rice paddies. No walls hide the view or limit the sky. When Yifeng needs to relieve himself, Miss Zhao holds on to him so he can do his business right into the swirling waters.
“Time to eat,” the boatman announces as the sun peeks through the clouds. He ties the sampan to a tree growing on the bank. He gives Miss Zhao a basket filled with rice balls stuffed with peanuts, which she hands out to each of us. After lunch, when the boatman takes Yifeng ashore to run off some energy, Miss Zhao says, “You’ve now gone many days without studying. I wanted you to have time to let your feelings settle.”
My breath catches. I don’t want to talk about my grief with her.
“And, of course, there was the horror of the ocean voyage…” She shakes her head as if to push the memory of it from her mind. “But now it’s time to begin again, don’t you think?”
“Respectful Lady was my teacher.”
Miss Zhao looks at me with such sympathy that I have to fight back tears.
“She was a wonderful teacher to you and Yifeng. Could there be a better way to honor her than to continue what she started?”
The rice balls feel like rocks in my stomach. I swallow hard.
“Maybe you think because I’m a concubine that all I know is how to be beautiful for your father and provide him with amusements,” she goes on, “but he wouldn’t care for me if I didn’t have other skills. I can read and write. I’ve studied the classics. So let’s see what you know. Tell me, what are a wife’s main duties?”
“To give birth to sons, uphold rules, and perform rituals that will guarantee a family’s success,” I mumble the list.
“And a concubine’s main duty, once you put aside everything else, is to provide a son if the wife is unable. I did that for your mother.”
I lift my eyes. I’m almost too scared to ask my question. “Are you going to become Father’s wife now?”
“This is not the time for you to worry about that,” she answers. But she can’t hide the longing in her voice when she adds, “Even if your father chooses me to become his wife, I know I could never replace Respectful Lady in your heart. For now, let’s open a book. I would love to hear you read.”
Yifeng and the boatman return to the sampan. We spend the rest of the afternoon drifting along a canal. I read aloud, and the others listen. If I stumble on a character, Miss Zhao leans over my shoulder to help me figure it out. When one of the guards points out a curiosity on the shore or Yifeng suddenly yips his delight at seeing something for the first time, Miss Zhao allows me to close my book and look too. Respectful Lady would never have done something like that, but I can’t fault Miss Zhao since she isn’t a real mother.
As the sky ripples pink at the end of the day, the boatman pulls to the shore and moors the vessel for the night. He makes us a simple meal of rice, braised bean curd, and sautéed river fish with soy sauce and green onions plucked from a nearby field. Miss Zhao, Yifeng, Poppy, and I go inside to find two pallets. Poppy will sleep on the floor by my feet as she usually does. Miss Zhao and Yifeng snuggle together. I have a pallet to myself. My entire body aches for my mother, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to fall asleep. Then, shockingly, I feel a hand on my back. It can only belong to Miss Zhao. She begins to hum softly and rub my back in small circles. I stay as still as possible, because I don’t want to let her know that I know it’s her…
We leave early the next morning. Hours slip by, but not once am I bored. There’s so much to see—a nearly naked boy sitting on the back of a water buffalo, farmers stooped in fields, willows draping long tendrils into the river. Sounds enchant my ears—the quacking of a flock of geese tended to by a pair of giggling girls about my age, a group of children with barrels tied to their backs to keep them afloat as they splash in the water, the boatman singing a country song. We glide on rivers, ponds, and small lakes, and finally along ever smaller and narrower canals. When I glimpse Miss Zhao gazing at the sights with the same intensity as I am, I realize she’s doing what I’m doing—taking in as many images as she can to preserve for later.
Finally, we reach the outskirts of Wuxi. “I’m told you are to be taken to the Tin Mountain district,” the boatman says. When Miss Zhao nods, he goes on. “We are close to Lake Tai. Have you heard of it?”
“When I was younger, I used to go to the dragon boat races on the lake,” she answers.
I know of the Dragon Boat Festival, but I never went to the activities in Wuxi. First, I was a baby and too young. Then my feet were being bound. I could have gone last year, but I had a fever and had to stay in bed. My father took Respectful Lady and Yifeng. How they talked about the fun they had—describing the decorations on each boat, the colorful costumes the rowers wore, and the strategies the boatmen used to win. I remember as well how upset Miss Zhao was that my father hadn’t let her join the party and how quietly pleased my mother was to see the concubine sulk. This year, my father took Miss Zhao, which left my mother more melancholy than usual.
Miss Zhao turns to me. “Maybe we can go together next year.”