The Painter of Shanghai Read Free Page B

uncle letter-writes forthe illiterate and peddles the shoes and handkerchiefs Xiuqing embroiders. But since she took over the household accounts (last year, after one of his longer clinic visits coincided with bill collectors carting off most of the little house’s furniture), Xiuqing is well aware of the sword’s-edge dance of their finances. It’s only thanks to Lina’s connections – and her fishing skills – that the household is eating at all.
    Sighing, Xiuqing opens her pine chest, one of the few items she convinced the bill collectors to leave, and begins making a pile:
    Two thick-weave cotton tunics.
    Two pairs of cotton trousers.
    A woven sash for holidays and special occasions.
    The cheap, knee-length cheongsam her uncle bought her to wear on their few New Year’s visits this year.
    A padded winter jacket ( warm things too ).
    After a moment’s hesitation she adds a pair of plain cotton slippers, passing over another pair that is newer but too big for her now. When she last wore them her feet were freshly bound, the pain a raw shock, a silent scream. The soles are clean because she’d crawled on hands and knees for four months. Still, the training shoes prompt her to remember something else. Turning, she pulls out a pair of shoes wrapped in yellowing tissue. These haven’t touched the ground either. In fact, they’ve never been worn at all. The red silk is intricately embroidered, with rows of Beijing knots plumping out magpies’ breasts. Delicate stem and split stitches outline hills full of peonies. In places the technique is so delicate and skilled that the bare silk is itself a motif. But there is onesmall patch by the back of the left heel that is blank in a different way. Unintentional; unfinished. A small mouth, crying.
    Xiuqing holds the shoes in her palms. Lifts them a little: one, two. They were made for her wedding day, to flutter over floor and ground. Her mama spoke of this someday wedding nearly every day toward the end, half reclining on her bed. Sewing, knotting, biting. It took Xiuqing a long time to realize that her mother was stitching more than just shoes. She was stitching her daughter a promise: after the binding, the finding. The making of a good match. Your uncle improved his lot with his mind: he learned to read. But a girl’s feet are her best chance to better herself. If we make them small enough, we’ll get our fortunes back. When you’ve grown, when your feet are perfect lilies.
    But Xiuqing’s feet never were perfect lilies. Her mother died before the bones had fully broken to the midwife’s specifications, and she’d lacked the strength, at the end, to make Xiuqing walk upon them properly. By the time Xiuqing reached Zhenjiang, her feet had grown by three full fingers, and she’d lacked the determination to break them back again. The result is that now, when she is fourteen, her feet are even bigger than those the neighborhood grandmothers scornfully call ‘Yangzhou style’ – six inches long, twice the size of the tiny lilies favored by Souzhou’s famed beauties. Bigger feet make for easier walking, of course. But her mother would have been aghast. ‘Sea bass,’ she would have called them. Xiuqing tries not to think about it.
    She can’t help wondering now, however, whether this journey might be about the long-awaited making of amatch. Is it possible? Has her odd old uncle actually found someone for her to marry? Xiuqing can’t imagine him living on his own, without her. But she also can’t imagine living here forever. As her mama always said, girls are raised for others…
    In the end she sets the shoes on the ‘pack’ pile, just in case. If she can’t wear them, then at least they’ll bring her luck.
    Sitting back, Xiuqing scans the room for anything else she might need, her gaze coming to rest on her broken looking glass. Her most steadfast companion here, the Mirror Girl, gazes back at her blankly. Her face is pale and slightly square, with a broad