Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [85]
“Lilin was filling their wooden lunch boxes with boiled rice to take to the fields when the pains struck and she knew the child was finally coming. When the pains became too bad to continue her work, she went to lie on her bedmat. No one came near, even though the Number Two wife heard her screams, and when the child was born it was a girl. Lilin wept, but the baby resembled her and she was someone to love, an infant who one day would love her in return. She gave her a pretty name, Mayling, and took the family name, Ke.
“Now she had to work even harder, looking after her child as well as all the household tasks, and she was forced to keep the baby quiet and out of sight because nobody wanted to be disturbed by its crying.
“One night she heard Ke Chungfen quarreling with his Number Two wife. Their voices were raised in anger. She was laughing at him, mocking him. The stink of her opium pipe crept through the thin screens and the voices got louder and then suddenly there was just silence. The next morning the old man said that his wife had died in the night from smoking too much opium.
“Lilin had to help lay her out and she could not help noticing the bruises on her neck, though the old man quickly covered them, and she felt sure that he had killed her.
“Afterward Lilin was frightened and tried to keep out of his way as much as possible, but with the Number Two wife gone he became even more of a tyrant. Even his sons felt the lash of his tongue as well as the lash of the whip he used at the ponds. But he still claimed his rights with her, though with good joss she did not become with child until some years had passed. Her daughter was already three years old when the next child was born. A son whom she named Ke Lai Tsin.”
“‘I have enough sons,’ the man said coldly when she proudly showed him the child.”
Lai Tsin stopped. He stared down at the floor, his brow furrowed as he remembered his mother. “She was still only seventeen,” he continued. “She had no love for this man. He had taken her against her will and she had not wanted his children. But now she loved them. She still kept his house clean, she washed the clothes and prepared their meals, but she gave her love to Mayling and Lai Tsin. Even though she herself existed only on rice and a few morsels of vegetables, she tried to see there was a little fish or meat in her children’s rice bowls at night. She taught them games, held them close, and told them she loved them. She called them by their milk-names, Mayling was ‘Little Treasure,’ and Lai Tsin, ‘Little Plum.’ They slept close to her at night on her bedmat and they would watch her combing her long black hair as she sang them to sleep.
“I was almost four years old when Chen was born and I remember laughing at his funny little pancake face. Mayling and I loved him and helped look after him, though we were already hard at work in the fields. But little Chen was not destined by the gods to grow to boyhood and the day he died was the saddest of my life. A year later our mother died. I was seven years and Mayling ten.” Lai Tsin shook his head sadly. “Even now I do not know what happened, only that one morning our mother did not wake up. I remember looking at her, wondering why she did not answer when I said I was hungry, and I noticed that even in her death-sleep she looked tired. Ke Chungfen had worked her to death.
“Our mother was not given a proper ceremonial burial. After all, she was only a mui-tsai. Ke Chungfen claimed he was too poor to buy a coffin and she was wrapped in the straw mat in which she had been laid out, tied at the head and the feet, and buried quickly. The loss of face at such a burial is overwhelming and our shame was terrible. The family observed no mourning and we went immediately back to our work in the fields. Mayling and I were left alone to face our father’s indifference and anger.”
There was a long silence; Lai Tsin’s face was drained of expression and emotion, and Francie forgot her own fears. She squeezed his hand. “Poor Lai Tsin. Your world was such a harsh one.”