The Language of Threads Read Free Page B

baba, and your elder sister, Li.”
    Pei began to cry, at first softly and then without restraint. She felt Lin take hold of her arm, pull her gently away from the others. Ma Ma stood before her, whispering words she could no longer hear.
    Once outside the closed door, Pei held tight to Lin. “Not you, too,” she said, through tears. “Not again.”
    â€œYou have to go on with your life in Hong Kong, just as we planned. We will be together again one day,” Lin whispered. “I promise.”
    Voices. Footsteps. A dull thump against the fragile partition. Pei awoke. In the darkness she felt lost. A thin, pale light filtered into the room. Ji Shen slept soundly in the bed across from her. Pei closed her eyes again, struggling hard to hold on to the memory of Lin’s sweet, lingering fragrance of jasmine.
Song Lee
    Song Lee quickened her steps, already late to meet the two new sisters waiting for her at Ma-ling’s. Wan Chai was crowded and noisy. In the past year, since the Japanese devils had seized Beijing and continued their march southward, more and more people had flowed into Hong Kong from Canton. Along with the crowds, the heat and humidity already felt unbearable. The pounds she had gradually put on in the eight years since she had arrived in Hong Kong left Song Lee gasping for air.
    That morning, when the young boy with Ma-ling’s message arrived at the gate of the house she worked at, Song Lee had already made plans for her Sunday afternoon. She’d intended to meet some of her other sisters at the Go Sing Teahouse in the Central District. There, the latest news and gossip were eagerly delivered. The sisterhood from Yung Kee and other villages had remained strong in Hong Kong. Most of the sisters were known to be clean and hardworking. Nearly all were enthusiastically accepted as amahs and servants in wealthy households, both Chinese and British. The majority of the sisters now working in Hong Kong had been in the sisterhood back in the delta region of Guangdong province for many years, and had gone through the hairdressing ceremony, pledging their lives to the silk sisterhood. Song Lee knew the Hong Kong Tai tais had their own term,
sohei
, to describe their vow never to marry. Their vow meant the sisters were less at risk of attracting philandering husbands, and their services quickly grew in value.
    Some sisters couldn’t adapt to domestic work and were soon replaced. But for the most part, the sisterhood continued to thrive in Hong Kong. Organizing themselves much as they had in the silk work, they remained strong in numbers. Loan associations and retirement committees were quickly formed to help sisters who found their way to Hong Kong. In no time, Song Lee became an active participant in helping the new arrivals adjust to living and working in Hong Kong.
    Like most of her sisters, Song Lee had had a lifetime of adjusting. She was the only daughter of a poor farmer and his wife. Her two older brothers were granted what little her parents had to offer them, both materially and emotionally, while Song Lee was given to the silk work when she was six, earlier than most. For months she refused to speak to anyone and cried herself to sleep every night. She lay small and voiceless in one of ten beds that lined the long, narrow room. Then one night Song Lee heardanother girl crying, the soft hiccuping breaths drawing her attention away from her own misery. She listened in the darkness, mesmerized by the strangely comforting lullaby. For the first time, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Every girl in the room had been abandoned by a family she loved. A dozen years later, Song Lee had pledged her life to helping her sisters in whatever way she could.
    By the time Song Lee reached the boardinghouse, she was hot and thirsty. The two new sisters were waiting for her as Ma-ling ushered her into the sitting room.
    â€œPlease, please, don’t get up,” Song Lee said. She