I bow my head and promise to do her bidding. A few minutes later, Miss Zhao returns. She pulls a chair next to mine, and we sit together in silence. My father was gone for Respectful Lady’s final hours, just as Grandfather is away from us now, which makes me wonder if a death vigil is something we women are compelled to do. I would not want Maoren to watch my final attempts at breath or see the messy things that happen as my soul departs my body.
I have witnessed many people die, but in Grandmother’s last hours, her terrible mask of pain disappears, and a golden hue infuses her cheeks as though she’s lit from within. Her breathing slows, but it isn’t labored. She doesn’t seem frightened. She presses my hand over her heart, and even in the final minutes I can feel her strength. And then she’s gone. Miss Zhao goes outside to inform Inky. Immediately, the sounds of lamentations rise throughout the compound. Miss Zhao brings Grandfather. Tears trickle down his aged face as he stands next to the bed gazing at his wife.
I remove myself so I can change into mourning clothes made of the coarsest raw linen. Miss Zhao and Inky help me wash Grandmother’s body and dress her in her burial garments. The next day, Grandfather meets with the geomancer, who chooses a date and place for Grandmother’s burial. My brother is in the capital for his final studies to take the imperial exams, but my father comes to Wuxi to attend his mother’s funeral rites. He brings with him Respectful Lady, who performs her duties well with Miss Zhao’s assistance. As for my father, I had not thought I would see him again, let alone so soon after the re-inquest. He holds me when I weep tears of loss.
On the day of Grandmother’s interment, a delegation that includes Master Yang, Lady Kuo, my husband, his uncles, and my two oldest daughters arrives from the Garden of Fragrant Delights. What seems like hundreds of others whom Grandmother treated over the years also come to venerate her and make offerings. I see Midwife Shi, Meiling and her husband. Every mourner wears a shade of white—like the autumn moon, snow, chalk, or mother’s milk—all within the spectrum associated with death and bereavement. I prostrate myself on the ground and wail when Grandmother is laid in her inner coffin, which is then set inside a larger coffin made of the finest wood. Mourners burn paper money for her to use to pay off demon dogs and spirits that might hinder her journey to the Afterworld and burn even more for her to use to buy necessities when she reaches her new home. For the next forty-nine days, I make offerings of food and pour libations of rice wine before Grandmother’s spirit tablet, so she won’t go hungry or thirsty. But I eat and drink little. My head hurts, and I’m so tired.
And then it’s time for me to return to my husband’s home. I take with me Grandmother’s books and notebooks, as well as the equipment she used for brewing tonics and teas and mixing poultices and ointments. Workmen build extra shelves in my room, and my mother-in-law sends rosewood cabinets for me to place against the walls—all to store my inheritance. I hide Grandmother’s special notebook behind the panel in my marriage bed. Beyond these tasks, which are many, I’m useless.
I should open each and every book Grandmother gave me. I should examine the contents of every vial and jar. I should begin memorizing Grandmother’s formulas. But I’m paralyzed by grief and exhaustion. My headache is blinding. I develop a sore throat, which turns into a deep, wet cough. I burn with fever. I prepare different formulas, but they don’t help. The weakness that has plagued me off and on since I was a child has found residence in my body. I retire to my bed and the images of marital bliss that surrounded my mother when she lay dying.
Meiling comes daily. She reports on Doctor Wong, who, for the weeks I’ve been in mourning at the Mansion of Golden Light, had been roaming Wuxi’s main square with a cangue around his neck to show the world his disgrace. She says the cangue’s weight has produced sores on his shoulders that suppurate with blood and pus. People look at him and see a man so gaunt that it’s as if he’s half man, half ghost. I find not one drop of compassion for him. My father gave Doctor Wong the punishment he deserved. His suffering would have ended too quickly if he’d lost his head in one quick chop of the executioner’s sword.
I am not myself…
As the hours and days pass, I lose will and the last of my energy. I stop eating. I have no desire to drink. I sleep but never wake refreshed. The longer I stay in bed, the weaker I become. I have fever followed by chills. I feel as though part of my soul leaves me until one day I’m so frail that my body seems barely strong enough to bear the weight of my garments. The passing of a single day feels like three winters.
Meiling does for me a great intimate kindness. Every four days she unwraps my bindings, washes my feet, applies alum between the toes, and wraps my feet again. I continue to decline, drifting closer and closer to my grandmother. My temperature soars. Each breath takes effort. What I cough up is as dark in color as cheap jade. My chest feels as though someone has placed an anchor on it. A doctor is brought in. He sits behind a screen and asks questions, but I haven’t the strength to answer them. One night, Maoren and my mother-in-law come to see me. They think I’m unaware of them, but I hear them discuss my health in serious terms. “You had better send a messenger to her father,” my mother-in-law advises. First, though, my husband brings my daughters to my bedside. They are good girls, and I apologize for not seeing them into their marriages. “Take care of Ailan,” I tell Yuelan and Chunlan. “Make sure her bindings stay tight, and that she practices her embroidery.” Parting from my son is hardest of all. I waited so long to have him, yet I have not spent the time with him that a good mother should.
Later that night, the lamps are dimmed. Meiling perches on a stool so she can watch over me, but she falls asleep, holding my hand, her head on my quilt. All is quiet except for my ragged breathing. I’m unafraid. I’ve accepted what’s coming, knowing I’ll soon be reunited with my grandmother and mother. Then, at the border of the sky and earth’s most distant corner, Grandmother Ru comes to me. Is this a dream? Am I having a fever vision? Is she a ghost? I cannot say, but she is before me as clearly and as solidly as the first time I met her. And she is very upset.
“As a Snake, you’ve always been vulnerable to those emotions and illnesses that attack from the inside, but now you must be strong,” she booms as only a resident of the Afterworld can.
“I can do nothing to change course,” I try to explain. “I fell ill when I married out. I fell ill after my first child was born. Now that you’ve left me, how can this sickness be a surprise? Sad emotions have always overtaken my body. Now is no different.”
“It is different! This is the last time!”
“You are not real.” I close my eyes, trying to drive away the apparition, but Grandmother doesn’t—won’t—leave.
“I am real.” Her voice finally begins to lower as she returns to the matter-of-fact approach I know so well. “Like Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy who sees into the hearts of all women, I’ve always felt that I could see through to your heart. Forever I’ve worried about your melancholic turn of mind and how it physically affected your body. This is your weakness, and it has been the pattern in your life. Why do you think I paired you with the daughter of a midwife? Her qi is exuberant, and I knew she would always take care of you. But now you must change. Do you think being feeble and pitiable presents a good example to your children?” When I don’t answer, she goes on. “You may think this illness is fatal, but it isn’t. I’m going to help you one last time. You have my special book of cases. Go to page fifty-eight. Follow the directions. In a few days, you will begin to feel better.”
I consider this possibility.
“You have done your duty to your husband and his family,” Grandmother goes on. “Now you must turn your attentions elsewhere. You were born to be a doctor of women, and a special destiny awaits you. You’ll use the arts you learned from me to save the sick, and you will have a good, useful, and extraordinarily long life—living until you reach seventy-three years.”
Could her prophecy possibly be real?
“But know this,” she continues. “The sickly constitution you have endured will help you going forward. A doctor who understands her own nature—and the sufferings of her own body—can better treat another woman, for their natures and bodies are in sympathy.” She starts to back away. I watch to see if she’ll open the door, melt through a wall, or simply vanish. “You still have an important task ahead of you. I couldn’t help Meiling, but you can. Give her the gift she desires. And remember, follow my medicine.”
I jolt upright. Meiling still sits on the stool, asleep, with her head on my quilt. Poppy is curled on the floor in the first antechamber. I pry loose the hidden panel in my bed and pull out Grandmother’s notebook. I gently touch Meiling’s cheek. Her eyes widen to see me sitting up.