“Can you help me?” I ask.
She nods uncertainly. I rise and steady myself by grasping the carvings that grace that half-moon entrance to my bed. Meiling supports me as I wobble forward. The only reason I can walk at all is that she took care of my feet. We pass through the dressing room, step over Poppy, out of the marriage bed, and into my room. I sway as I turn over in my mind everything Grandmother told me.
“Take me to my desk,” I request.
When we reach it, Meiling raises the wicks on two lamps, and I open Grandmother’s notebook to the page she specified. As I read aloud, Meiling begins to pull ingredients from my shelves and drawers.
* * *
Grandmother was right. My fever comes down and my lungs slowly empty of phlegm, although it will take months to fully recover and rebuild my strength. My convalescence gives me time to contemplate. I’ve been lucky to have been cared for and loved since childhood by a circle of women. Now it’s time for me to create a wider circle, so I can do for my daughters and other women in the household what Grandmother, Miss Zhao, Meiling, and even Poppy have done for me.
Spring begins to make an appearance, although the blossoms on the plum and crabapple trees remain vulnerable to frost. This is when we’re supposed to say goodbye to the past and hello to new beginnings, and I do. I think about the contributions I can make with what remains of my life. In visiting death, I’ve found the inner strength Grandmother said I have. Just as she once told me to speak if I wanted to be heard, I finally understand that I must act in ways I haven’t had the courage to do in the past and resolve some of the issues and problems that have existed in my life.
Now that I’m strong enough, I decide it’s time to visit my mother-in-law. When my father and I had our time together on the Hermitage terrace after the re-inquest, he warned me against pursuing further intrigues within our gates. Maybe he was right, but I can’t move forward with my life until I can pack away what happened to Spinster Aunt and Meiling once and for all. My father chose not to call Lady Kuo as a witness, but I still have questions for her I’d like answered.
Keeck, keeck. The familiar sound greets me when I enter Lady Kuo’s room for the first time since I left for the capital so many months ago. Sparrow opens the windows to let the dawn light filter in and the suffocating smell of liquor breath disperse. My mother-in-law sees me and beckons me to her bed. I stand with my hands tucked up my sleeves, signaling that I’m not here to make obeisance or serve tea. She must see the change in me, or she intuits my purpose for being here, because she says, “I have good news for you. I’ve decided you may practice your medicine openly. You have proved yourself to be a ming yi—a famous doctor.”
After all these years and everything that’s transpired, I say, “I will not be so easily bought or silenced.”
Lady Kuo sucks her lips into her mouth as though to swallow what she wishes to say. I don’t doubt this will be a difficult conversation, with me pulling truth from her tongue painful word by painful word.
“Did you invite Doctor Wong to Miss Chen’s bed?” I ask. “Or did something else happen—rape or an agreement between the two of them—that you decided should be kept a secret?”
I expect resistance, if not outright denials. I’m prepared either way. What I didn’t anticipate is that she would look at me squarely, pat a spot next to her on the bed, and say, “Sit.” Naturally, I do as I’m told.
“I love Maoren,” she begins. “He is my son. But he was my only son. I tried to make another with my husband and got three daughters instead. Although we were still young, there came a point when he couldn’t or wouldn’t complete the task. I thought he was no longer interested in me.”
“Which is why you purchased Miss Chen.”
“When she didn’t become full with child during her first months here, I thought she might be having the same problems with my husband that I’d experienced. Remember, years had passed since I’d last gotten pregnant. Desperate, I sought Doctor Wong’s advice.” She falls silent for a few moments. “If something happened to Maoren, especially once he started traveling back and forth to Nanjing, everything would transfer to Second Uncle. Power. Money. Land. Decisions. I had to do whatever I could to secure the Garden of Fragrant Delights and all the Yang holdings for our direct descendants, even if it meant going behind my husband’s back—to spare him the humiliation—and sending a doctor to a concubine’s bed.” She takes my hand and stares into my eyes. “In Manzi, my husband and I had a ritual son in case something happened to Maoren. But of course, all I wished for was that you would give us the grandson we needed, which you did—”
“Eventually.” We stare at each other. Finally, I say, “I keep thinking back to the day Miss Chen and I told you we were both pregnant. I thought you were angry.”
“I wasn’t angry. I was surprised. If I’d known you were full with child, everything might have turned out differently.”
“I still only had a daughter. Your problem remained.”
“That’s true.” Her eyes get a faraway look. She wouldn’t be my mother-in-law if she didn’t surprise me completely. “One day when you’re the head woman of the Garden of Fragrant Delights, you might do as I did.”
“I would never—”
“Wouldn’t you? It’s been my responsibility to make sure the family endures and that we have a son to make offerings to the ancestors. You’ll eventually carry this burden. It’s what I’ve been training you to do all these years. It’s been my supreme duty as your mother-in-law.”
I consider this. Have I misinterpreted her actions and her treatment of me? Perhaps. But that’s not what’s at issue here.
“In any case,” my mother-in-law continues, “Doctor Wong gave the Yang family the son it needed. What I didn’t realize at the time was that his desires would stretch far beyond mine.”
“You could have stopped him.”
“How? Think about it, Yunxian. What could I have done that would not have caused unending disruption and disgrace to my husband, son, you, and everyone else in our line? And I include Miss Chen’s daughters in that.”
I hadn’t thought about them. “Are they Doctor Wong’s too?”
Lady Kuo shakes her head. “Fate. My husband eventually gave her four daughters—one more than he gave me.”
“What about Spinster Aunt?”
“Until the re-inquest, I thought her death was a sad accident.” She goes on to ask what would have been my next question. “The herbs Doctor Wong sent to give you in Beijing? I swear I did not know they would be harmful.” She squeezes my hand. “These things I confessed to your father when he first arrived for the re-inquest. There were choices to be made to protect the descendants of our two families, and together we made them. He told me that for my punishment I will suffer in the Afterworld for all eternity. I told him I was content with that.”
“So now, to keep me quiet, you’ll allow me to treat patients?”
“I would hope you’d keep silent for the family. As for your medicine, you proved yourself to me long ago when you cured Yining.”
The concubine’s daughter I treated when I first married in…
“You’ve always turned a blind eye to my activities,” I say, finally understanding.
She lifts a shoulder. Silence hangs between us. Then, “I hope that you’ll continue to remain as discreet as you’ve always been.”
I wait, feeling there’s more.
After a moment, Lady Kuo continues. “So here we are. I have not been a particularly good teacher for you, but this is not uncommon. After all, having a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law in the same room is like tying a weasel and a rat together in a sock. The weasel and rat are enemies by nature. The weasel may be larger and have sharper teeth, but the rat is smarter and faster. I hope that going forward we can work together, and you will allow me to teach you to be the head woman of the household. And, as I said earlier, you may continue to treat women and girls. But please, please, remain inside the compound. Always consider how your activities affect the reputations of all the women and girls in our home, including your own daughters, who will be married out to other families one day.”
“What about visiting Grandfather and Meiling?”
“You may continue to visit your family home and that of Young Midwife. But that is it. No treating patients outside our compound.” She pauses, considering. “I will give you one additional gift, and that is to right the wrong against Midwife Shi. I will send a message to Wuxi’s other elite families by allowing both Young Midwife and her mother to bring babies into the world here at the Garden of Fragrant Delights.”