Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [65]
“And what about my reputation? I arranged this betrothal for you, and it was witnessed by your ancestors. If you turn it down for no good reason, how will I ever hold up my head in the village?”
“Mum, I left for Gold Mountain when I was sixteen years old and went through hell there. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have become a beggar and begged my way back home. I’m back now, who knows for how long, maybe a year, maybe a few months, but sooner or later I have to go back to Gold Mountain. I’m not afraid of hard work. I just want to marry a girl I get on with, who can make me happy and who’ll look after you properly when I’m gone. We don’t know what that girl’s like. But the whole village knows Six Fingers is a good and virtuous girl. Her needlework may not be up to yours but it’s quite decent and she’ll be a great help to you. Please, Mum, let me have what I desire!”
“The reason why her parents gave her to Red Hair and his family was they thought her sixth finger would bring bad luck and they wouldn’t be able to marry her off. Doesn’t that scare you off her?”
“Her parents are just ignorant. Magistrate Huang has a sixth finger too, and he’s in charge of a whole county of five-fingered people. Maybe Six Fingers is destined to become rich and powerful! Besides, she does all the villagers’ scrolls for their family events, doesn’t she? I’ve never heard that she’s brought them bad luck.”
His mum gripped the pods in hands which trembled slightly. The juice ran out between the fingers and trickled across the wrinkled skin of the back of her hand.
“You can’t back out of that betrothal, I’d lose too much face. You can marry Six Fingers, but as a second wife. Go and see your future father-in-law tomorrow with Ha Kau, and see if he’ll agree to you marrying his daughter first, and then marrying Six Fingers.”
Ah-Fat was about to say something more but his mother was already on her feet and hobbling off towards the kitchen without the aid of her stick.
“We’ll have to get her horoscope done first. That’s just as important for a second wife as for the first. Our family has only been at peace for a few years. We can’t have a woman bring calamity on us.”
When Auntie Cheung Tai had seen off her guest and went into the back room of the house, she found Six Fingers sewing. She was altering a lined jacket which had been left to her by her elder sister. It was made of a silk weave, not the most expensive kind but almost new, and had been kept in a trunk for a few years. By the time Six Fingers remembered it, there were a couple of moth holes, but fortunately they were in the sleeve under the armpit and with a small mend would not show. The material was a sapphire blue colour embroidered with dark blue flowers—something an older woman might wear but still fashionable: it had wide decorative edging, a stand-up collar and big sleeves, rather like the Manchu-style jackets worn in North China. It would suit Six Fingers’ tall figure.
Six Fingers had finished her mending and was pulling the sleeves through. When she was sewing, she used her thumb and forefinger but the extra stump of a finger which grew next to her thumb wobbled as if it was putting in a big effort too. In fact, its efforts were just a distraction and it got in the way. Unlike the care she gave to the rest of her fingers and toes, Six Fingers paid no attention at all to this extraneous finger—it might as well have belonged to someone else and just have been planted on her. This contrary stub had nothing to do with her.
She might have had a completely different life, she thought to herself, if this finger had not butted in so unreasonably, changing it into what it was today. Was it a good life? She could not answer that question. She had nothing to compare it with. However, she did secretly wonder if, without this extra stub of a finger,