In the afternoon, she dyed my hair black, oiled it, and pulled it tight so it would lie flat. In between, she talked.
“No one is here to please you. Don’t expect that from me. You are here to please others. You should never displease anyone—not the men who visit you, not the madam, not your flower sisters. Ah, perhaps you do not need to please the menservants and maids. But do not turn them against you. Pleasing others will make your life easier. And the opposite leads to the opposite. You must show the new madam that you understand that. You must be that girl she wants to keep. I promise you—if you are sent to another house, life will be worse. You would not move up in popularity and comfort, only down, down, down. Up and down—that’s our life. You mount the stage and do everything to make men love you. Later they will remember those moments with you. But they are not memories of you, but the feeling they were immortal because you made them gods. Remember this, Violet, when you step on the stage, you are not loved for who you are. When you step off, you may not be loved at all.” She daubed powder on my face, and clouds of white dust rose. She read my face. “I know you don’t believe me now.” She ran a brush of kohl over my eyebrows and painted my lips. “I will have to tell you these things many times.”
She was wrong. I believed her. I knew life could be cruel. I had seen the downfall of many courtesans. I believed something cruel had happened to my mother. That was why she was loveless and could not truly love anyone, not even me. She could only be selfish. No matter what happened to me in the future, I would not become like her.
Magic Gourd brought out a headband. “I wore this when I was your age. These are just tiny seed pearls, but in time, you will have your own, and maybe the pearls will be real.” She placed the headband around the back of my head and pushed it over my face, tucking in the loose strands.
“It’s too tight,” I complained. “It’s pulling at the corners of my eyes.”
She lightly slapped the top of my head. “Oyo! Are you unable to endure even this small amount of pain?” She stood back and looked sternly at the result, then smiled. “Good. Phoenix eyes, the most attractive shape. Look in the mirror. Eyes shaped like an almond and tipped up at the corners. No matter how much I pull back the sides of my hair, I cannot make a phoenix eye. Those eyes came from your father’s side of the family.”
I could not stop staring at myself in the mirror, turning my head, opening and closing my mouth. My face, where was my face? I touched my cheeks. Why did they look larger? The headband formed a V at my forehead and framed my face into a long oval. My eyebrows tipped upward at the ends as well. The center of my lips was painted into a red pucker, and my face was pale with white powder. With just these few touches, the Western half of me had disappeared. I had become the race I once considered inferior to mine. I smacked my lips and raised my eyebrows. I had the face of a courtesan. Not beautiful, not ugly, but a stranger. At night I scrubbed off the new face, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw how black my hair was. My true face was still there, what had always been there: the phoenix eyes.
The next day, Magic Gourd taught me to put on powder and rouge. The same Chinese mask appeared. I was taken aback but not shocked this time. I realized that all the courtesans looked different after they had prepared their faces for the evening. They wore masks, and throughout the day, I picked up the mirror and looked at mine. I added more powder and tightened the headband so that my eyes were pulled higher. No one, not even my mother, would have recognized me.
THE NEW MADAM was named Li, and she brought with her a courtesan whom she had bought when the girl was four. Under Madam Li’s tutelage, Vermillion had grown to become a well-known first-class courtesan, now nineteen years old. She had earned the affection of the madam, who called her “Daughter.” They had come from Soochow, where Madam Li owned a first-class courtesan house. It was widely thought that the courtesans from Soochow were the best. That was the opinion of everyone, and not just those in our world. The Soochow girls had a gentle manner, a leisurely way of moving, and their voices were sweet and soft. Many Shanghainese flowers advertised that they were from Soochow. But in the presence of one who truly was, the lie was apparent. Madam Li believed that she could have even greater success in Shanghai, where money flowed from across the sea, and after she bought the Hall of Tranquility, in keeping with the custom of naming first-class houses after the madam or the star, she renamed it in honor of her daughter: the House of Vermillion. It was good advertising as well. All the courtesans were sent away. I was not yet a courtesan, so I had no second-class reputation to overcome. There was a lot of crying and cursing among the departing flower sisters as their trunks were inspected to make sure they were not taking along furs and dresses that belonged to the house. The courtesan Petal threw me a hateful look. “Why is she keeping you? A half-breed belongs on the streets, not in a first-class house.”
“What about the courtesan Breeze?” I countered. Magic Gourd had told me recently about Breeze to give me encouragement. She was one part Chinese and another part American.
“The quantity of blood from each is not known,” Magic Gourd said. “And there were other rumors—that she had been not only a courtesan, but, early on, a common prostitute. Whoever she was, she worked step-by-step to raise herself to a better status every few months. According to plan, she attracted the affection of a wealthy Western man who took her for his wife. Now she is too powerful for anyone to speak openly about her past. That is what you should do. Step-by-step, higher and higher.”
Madam Li invited three courtesans from top-ranked houses, who had been lured by an agreement that they could keep any money earned in the first three months without sharing it with the house.
“Very smart of Madam Li,” Magic Gourd told me. “Those girls will work hard to take advantage of the deal, and the House of Vermillion will get off to a fast start.”
The cheap furniture and decorations in the salon were replaced that first day with the latest styles. And the courtesans’ boudoirs were sumptuously refurbished with silk and velvet, painted glass lamps, carved high-back chairs with tassels, and lace-curtained screens that hid the toilet and bathing tub from view.
My room remained the same. “You won’t be entertaining any guests in your room for at least a year,” Magic Gourd said, “and we still have to pay rent. Why run up our debt?” I noticed that she had said “our debt,” making it clear that she also meant “our money.” “What I have in this room,” she continued, “is much nicer than what the other girls had. It is still in style and it’s all paid for.” The furniture was dowdy and worn.
On the second day, we were seated at a table with Madam Li and Vermillion. Magic Gourd had already warned me to remain silent or she would pinch a hole in my thigh.
“Do you know why I am keeping her?” the madam asked Magic Gourd.
“You have goodness for this unfortunate waif and recognize her promise. We are most grateful.”
“Goodness? Pah! I’m keeping her as a favor to my old flower sister Golden Dove, only that. I have always been indebted to her for something that happened many years ago, and she extracted that debt from me when she moved to Soochow.”
Now the debt to Golden Dove had changed hands to me. Madam Li stared hard at me. “You better behave. I did not promise you could stay forever.”
Magic Gourd thanked her with excessive words. She said she would be a worthy tutor and attendant. She blathered on about her experience as a first-class courtesan, her ranking as one of the top Ten Beauties of Shanghai.
The madam cut in. “I don’t need to hear more of this boasting. It’s not going to change the fact that she is mixed race. And I don’t want Violet bragging to guests