The Language of Threads Read Free

darkness.
    â€œThank you.” She tried to smile, grateful at least for the window.
    â€œEverything will look better in the morning,” Ma-ling assured her. “The bathroom is down the hall. There are only a few other sisters staying with us now, so it should be quiet. The kitchen is downstairs. I’ll bring you up some tea and sweet buns in case you’re hungry.”
    â€œThank you for everything,” Pei said, too exhausted to say anything else.
    Ma-ling closed the door behind them, leaving Pei and Ji Shen by themselves. Pei couldn’t believe they had come so far from their life in Yung Kee and the silk factory. With the Japanese now occupying most of China, she wondered whether Chen Ling and Ming were safely hidden away at the temple in the countryside where they’d taken refuge, and whether Moi would be all right by herself at the girls’ house. Pei tried to push these thoughts out of her mind. Yet she couldn’t stop wondering if she had made the right choice leaving Yung Kee. Her doubt was like the constant prickling of bristles.
    â€œIt’s as if everything’s alive here.” Ji Shen’s voice rose and filled the small space.
    Pei inhaled, the warm air tasting slightly stale. “I suppose it’s time we join in,” she heard herself respond. She looked around at the bare, colorless cubicle that was now their home, then hurried to open the window, letting in the demanding, boisterous voices from outside.

    That night, in a restless sleep, Pei dreamed of Lin. Once again she heard her friend’s sweet, calm voice telling her that everything would be all right. At twenty-seven, Pei had spent almost twenty years of her life with Lin, first at the girls’ house with Auntie Yee and Moi, and then at the sisters’ house, where their life took on the comfortable rhythm of work at the silk factory. Pei was amazed at how easy it was to forget. Suddenly gone were the raw, sore fingers from soaking the cocoons in boiling water, the long, grueling hours of standing on damp concrete floors, the lives that were lost in their union’s struggle against the rich factory owners. And Lin’s death. It wasn’t just Lin’s death that tormented her, but how she had died, and what had gone through her mind as she gasped for breath, slowly suffocating in the devastating fire that destroyed the silk factory. In the past month, Pei had learned what to hold on to, and what to discard.
    Instead, Pei dreamed moments of pleasure. How Lin always found answers to her smallest questions, even before Pei could ask them. When she first came to work at the silk factory, the steamy, sweet-sweaty smell of the soaking cocoons seeped into every pore of her skin, clung to her clothes, hung on every strand of her hair. It was so persistent, yet so subtle a scent, Pei thought it wouldn’t ever wash out.
    â€œWash your hair with this,” Lin had told her one evening when they’d returned to the girls’ house. She held up a bottle filled with an amber liquid. When Lin shook it, white jasmine petals drifted through the liquid, floating slowly back down to the bottom of the bottle.
    â€œDoes it work?”
    Lin stepped closer. “Here, smell,” she directed.
    From that day on, the scent of jasmine became a part of Pei’s everyday life. Just after the girls had washed their hair, the strong, sweet smell rose up and filled their room at the girls’ house; she couldn’t help but think of Lin. Even the clean smell of Auntie Yee’s ammonia was no match for the jasmine.
    Again, Pei smelled jasmine in her dreams. Ammonia. Cocoonsboiling in hot water. The fragrance of Moi’s cooking wafting from under the kitchen door they were forbidden to open without knocking first. Again, Pei stood at the bottom of the wide wooden stairway that led up to their rooms. She heard a sound, a small intake of breath, and looked up to see Lin, radiant in her white