“‘Wah!’ She jumped out of her chair, and then immediately pretended the news meant nothing to her. ‘An insect just bit my leg,’ she said. ‘That’s why I leapt up.’ To improve the lie, she scratched herself.
“I gave her more to scratch: ‘He never came with friends to host his own parties. Remember that? People were expected to invite him to their parties once he arrived. Such an honor! Everyone wanted to please him. In fact, one of the courtesans was so impressed with his title, she gave her goods away, hoping he would make her Mrs. Commissioner. She took him into her boudoir and she never knew he had already stuck himself into Persimmon just before visiting her.’
“The old bustard’s eyes grew really big when I said that. I was beginning to feel a little sorry for her, but I had to go on. ‘And it is even worse than that,’ I said. I told her what I had heard about Commissioner Li, facts she would clearly remember. ‘Whenever he shared this courtesan’s bed, he told her to go ahead and put a full three-dollar charge on his bill—a charge for a party call, even though he had not held a party. He said he did not want her to lose money from spending so much time with him instead of with other suitors. Anyone would think he was generous beyond belief. By the New Year, he owed nearly two hundred dollars. As you know, it’s customary for all clients of the house to settle their accounts that day. He never did. He was the only one. He never showed his face again. Two hundred dollars’ worth of fucks.’
“I saw the old bustard’s mouth was locked into an expression of bitterness. I think she was trying to keep from cursing him. I said what I knew she was thinking: ‘Men like that should have their cocks shrivel up and fall off.’ She nodded vigorously. I went on. ‘People say that the only gift he gave her was syphilitic sores. They assumed he did, since the maid had it—a sore on her mouth, then her cheek, and who knows how many more in places we couldn’t see.’
“The blood drained from the old bustard’s face. She said, ‘Maybe it was the maid’s husband who gave her syphilis.’
“I was not expecting her to come up with this, so I had to think fast. ‘Everyone knew that the old sot could barely lean over the side of his bed to piss. He was a bag of bones. But what difference did it make whether she had it first or he did? In the end, they both had the pox, and everyone figured he must have given it to the courtesan, and she probably did not even know. Persimmon drank mahuang tea all day long, to no avail. When her nipples dripped pus, she covered them in mercury and got very sick. The sores dried up, and she thought she was cured. Six months ago, her hands turned black, and then she died.’
“The old bustard looked as if a pot had fallen on her head. Really, I felt sorry for her, but I had to be ruthless. I had to save myself. Anyway, I didn’t go on, even though I had thought to say that someone learned that the Commissioner of Lies had died of the same black hand disease. I told her that was the reason I had feared for her when I saw her hands. She mumbled that it was not a disease but the cursed liver pills. I gave her a sympathetic look and said we should ask the doctor to check her chi to get rid of this ailment, since those pills were doing no good. Then I went on: ‘I hope no one believes you have the pox. Lies spread faster than you can catch them. And if people see you touching the beauties with your black fingers, they might say the whole house is contaminated. Then the public health bureaucrats will come, everyone will have to be tested, and the house closed down until they verify we are clean. Who wants that? I don’t want someone examining me and getting a peek for free. And even if you’re clean, those bastards are so corrupt, you’ll have to give them money so they don’t hold up the report.’
“I let this news settle in before I said what I had wanted all along. ‘Mother Ma, it just occurred to me that I might help you keep this rumor from starting. Until you correct the balance in the liver, let me serve as Violet’s teacher and attendant. I’ll teach her all the things I know. As you recall, I was one of the top Ten Beauties in my day.’
“The old bustard fell for it. She nodded weakly. For good measure, I said: ‘You can be sure that if the brat needs a beating, I’ll be quick to do it. Whenever you hear her screaming for mercy, you’ll know that I’m making good progress.’
“What do you think of that, Violet? Clever, eh? All you have to do is stand by the door once or twice a day and shout for forgiveness.”
THERE WAS NO single moment when I accepted that I had become a courtesan. I simply fought less against it. I was like someone in prison who was about to be executed. I no longer threw the clothes given to me on the floor. I wore them without protest. When I received summer jackets and pantalets made of a light silk, I was glad for the cool comfort of them. But I took no pleasure in their color or style. The world was dull. I did not know what was happening outside these walls, whether there were still protestors in the streets, whether all the foreigners had been driven away. I was a kidnapped American girl caught in an adventure story in which the latter chapters had been ripped out.
One day, when it was raining hard, Magic Gourd said to me, “Violet, when you were growing up you pretended to be a courtesan. You flirted with customers, lured your favorites. And now you are saying you never imagined you would be one?”
“I’m an American. American girls do not become courtesans.”
“Your mother was the madam of a first-class courtesan house.”
“She was not a courtesan.”
“How do you know that? All the Chinese madams began as courtesans. How else would they learn the business?”
I was nauseated by the thought. She might have been a courtesan—or worse, an ordinary prostitute on one of the boats in the harbor. She was hardly chaste. She took lovers. “She chose her life,” I said at last. “No one told her what to do.”
“How do you know that she chose to enter this life?”
“Mother never would have allowed anyone to force her to do anything,” I said, then thought: Look what she forced on me.
“Do you look down on those who cannot choose what they do in life?”
“I pity them,” I said. I refused to see myself as part of that pitiful lot. I would escape.
“Do you pity me? Can you respect someone you pity?”
“You protect me and I’m grateful.”
“That’s not respect. Do you think we are equals?”
“You and I are different … by race and the country we belong to. We cannot expect the same in life. So we are not equal.”
“You mean I must hope for less than you do.”
“That is not my doing.”
Suddenly, she turned red in the face. “I am no longer less than you! I am more. I can expect more. You will expect less. Do you know how people will see you from now on? Look at my face and think of it as yours. You and I are no better than actors, opera singers, and acrobats. This is now your life. Fate once made you American. Fate took it away. You are the bastard half who was your father—Han, Manchu, Cantonese, whoever he was. You are a flower that will be plucked over and over again. You are now at the bottom of society.”
“I am an American and no one can change that, even if I am held against my will.”
“Oyo! How terrible for poor Violet. She is the only one whose circumstances changed against her will.” She sat down and continued to make chuffing noises as she threw me disgusted looks. “Against her will … You can’t make me! Oyo! Such suffering she’s had. You’re the same as everyone here, because now you have the same worries. Maybe I should do what I promised Mother Ma and beat you until you learn your place.” She fell silent, and I was grateful that her tirade had ended.
But then she spoke again, now in a soft and sad voice, as if she were a child. She looked away and remembered when her circumstances changed, again and again.