The Moon Pearl Read online

  “The Moon Pearl relates another tale of desire, of reaching for something that, in the time and place of the story, seems as impossible to grasp as the icy moon: female independence… . The bravery of the (heroines), their willingness to help other women in the village as well as their families (who have disowned them) and their persistence in maintaining their physical, economic and spiritual independence are utterly inspiring and captivating.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Charming… . An important book that depicts a largely unknown chapter in the history of Chinese women.”

  —JULIA WILSON, Associated Press

  “McCunn’s beautifully crafted novel brings a new chapter to Chinese womanhood and the inspirational fight for economic and personal freedom.”

  —Honey

  “If you want an easily digestible slice of another world that’ll nourish you as you walk through these tough times, The Moon Pearl is a very good choice.”

  —Bust Magazine

  “Based on interviews with real women, the novel uncovers an inspiring history of independent women … who lived and worked together, ungoverned by men.”

  —Ms.

  “Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s new novel The Moon Pearl is filled with the heart and songs of old China. Wonderfully researched, it is the vivid and courageous tale of three Chinese girls, who struggle against all odds to forge the beginnings of a powerful silk sisterhood in nineteenth-century China. It is a lovely addition to the growing stories of women who have found the strength to discover new lives.”

  —GAIL TSUKIYAMA, author of The Language of Threads

  OTHER BOOKS BY RUTHANNE LUM MCCUNN

  Fiction

  Thousand Pieces of Gold

  Wooden Fish Songs

  Nonfiction

  Sole Survivor

  Chinese American Portraits:

  Personal Histories 1828–1988

  Juvenile

  Pie-Biter

  This book is dedicated with profound gratitude to the many strangers, friends, relatives, and professionals who carried me through a difficult period after a near fatal car accident, especially Vince Villeggiante, who risked his personal safety to hold my hand; Stan Chamness, who led the first of several teams of professionals that gave me another chance at life; Don McCunn, whose presence in my life spurred me to seize that chance and who repeatedly made the impossible possible; Herbert Randall and Lily Song, who kept constant vigil; Dr. Philip O’Keefe, who was always present; Dr. Gabriel Kind, who led the surgical teams that saved my right leg; Sonny Vukic, who brought the leg to life and taught me how to walk again; Patrick Tribble, who provided crucial fine tuning; Carole Arett, Katie Gilmartin, Robin Grossman, Yvette Huginnie, Mim Locke, Carol Olwell, Lynda Preston, and Judy Yung, who gave and gave—and continue to give.

  The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

  —Frederick Douglass

  To change society, you have to start with yourself.

  —Han Dongfang

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  ONE • 1826–1833

  Girls’ Houses

  Shadow

  A Bird Snared in a Trap

  Dreams of Happiness

  Wily as a Fox

  A Dead, Stinking Fate

  TWO • 1836–1837

  A Matchmaker’s Claims

  A Red Affair

  Wife

  Insides Turned Upside Down

  Struggling Woman

  The Big Wind

  THREE • 1837–1838

  The Best Thing

  Vows of Spinsterhood

  Gwoon Yum’s Song

  New Lives

  Only One Heaven

  A Lick of Hope

  Outcasts

  Opposite Sides

  FOUR • 1838

  Mountain Pines

  Dead Useless

  Freedom

  Magpies Cry and Caw

  A Miracle

  Tongues as Swords

  FIVE • 1838–1840

  Tipping the Scales

  Mercies

  A Stranger

  Sisters

  Changing Luck

  Capable Women

  Acknowledgments

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Even today, single women in America are usually considered somehow less than those who are married, and the word “spinster” continues to have negative connotations. In the Sun Duk district of southern China’s Pearl River Delta, however, independent spinsters won acceptance, admiration, and respect during the 1830s.

  This novel was inspired by these Delta spinsters, who came to be known as sze saw, self-combers. While the characters sprang from my imagination, the ceremonies, cultural beliefs, and practices depicted are those of nineteenth-century Sun Duk.

  Readers interested in my sources will find them in the Acknowledgments.

  Prologue

  DRAGONS can shrink small as silkworms or grow large as the sky; their breath can become cooling waters or fiery licks of flame; their roar is louder than that of a big wind; and they can make themselves visible or invisible. But no woman, man, or child has ever seen a dragon grasp the moon pearl. Nevertheless, people hope to succeed where powerful dragons fail.

  Look at Sun Duk. A district in the Pearl River Delta, it is laced with silver ribbons of water that rise and fall because of changing ocean tides. Jade-green rice paddies and shimmering fish ponds lie between windbreaks of bamboo, stands of fruit trees, fields with vegetables, mulberry shrubs, freshly ploughed furrows. Here and there, small hills rise. Some are rounded. Others slope steeply, with large outcroppings of rock. Most are wooded or terraced with plantings of tea. All are speckled with tombstones that look like fallen half-moons. Islands and small boats dot the rivers; and along the banks, rows of slate-gray houses with reddish tile roofs snake under weeping willows, banyans, and golden acacias like scaled dragons seeking shade.

  In the east, the silver ribbons of water are finer because gentry built embankments across these rivers, then threw large stones and iron pieces into the water around the embankments to block the current so that silt gradually piled up, making new land for growing more mulberry. In the west, most of the rivers still flow freely, and there is less land, fewer fields of mulberry, fewer silkworms that can be raised. But make no mistake, the inhabitants of Twin Hills Village in the west pursue the moon pearl as fervently as those of Strongworm Village in the east.

  ONE

  1826–1833

  Girls’ Houses

  YUN YUN’S good friend, Lucky, had started passing her nights at one of the many girls’ houses in Twin Hills. And, listening to Lucky’s excited chatter about the games they played before going to sleep, Yun Yun was eager to join in the fun. But Yun Yun’s father had taught her, “Overcrowding is not good for silkworms or people.” He’d also shown her what happened to worms heaped in a space too small: the strong fed at the expense of the weak; then the strong and the weak became heated and perspired, fell sick, and often died. So Yun Yun was afraid. As she told her parents, “The girls’ house that Lucky belongs to already has thirteen members. Yet it isn’t any bigger than our house. There are just two sleeping rooms.” She counted off the people in their family on her fingers: her father and mother and the new baby brother she was nursing; the two little brothers playing in the courtyard under their grandparents’ watchful eyes; herself. “We’re only eight. Maybe I should stay at home.”

  “You silly melon,” her mother said over the baby’s loud sucking. “Men don’t go into girls’ houses, so the members can set up beds everywhere—in the common room as well as the sleeping rooms.”

  Yun Yun’s father set down the baske
t he was weaving, rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, ducked his head so they were eye-to-eye. “Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s plenty of space for you.”

  “Anyway, you’re nine,” her mother continued. “It’s time you went to a girls’ house.”

  Yun Yun’s father squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “Otherwise you might see or hear things you shouldn’t.”

  Frowning, her mother plucked her father’s sleeve, and he dropped his arms, fell silent.

  Yun Yun leaned against her father. “What things?”

  He raised his eyebrows, quizzing her mother.

  “Things that are of no concern to girls,” her mother answered firmly.

  Once her mother’s voice turned hard, she was like iron. Even Yun Yun’s brothers couldn’t move her. So Yun Yun ran next door to ask Lucky. Of course Lucky, although a year older, might not know either, but she had two easygoing sisters-in-law that they could consult if necessary.

  Lucky cocked her head at the odorous honey bucket kept indoors for the family’s convenience and to prevent theft. “You might see your father or grandfather taking a piss.”

  Yun Yun laughed. “I see my brothers piss all the time. I even have to help them!”

  “Your brothers are babies. I’m talking about men. And not just about their pissing either.” Lucky dropped her voice to a whisper. “Men take pleasure in their wives at night, and if you continue to sleep at home, you might see or hear your father or grandfather taking pleasure in your mother and grandmother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll understand after you’ve had a few lessons from Old Granny. She comes five, six times a month to the girls’ house to teach us.”

  Except for the three large four-poster beds crowded into the common room, the inside of the girls’ house initially seemed the same to Yun Yun as any other house in Twin Hills Village. The slate-gray brick walls were unpainted, and at the far end of the common room, there was a small altar. Then Yun Yun realized there were no spirit tablets for dead ancestors on the altar, and the statue on it wasn’t Gwan Gung, the red-faced God of War, but Gwoon Yum, the smiling Goddess of Mercy, seated on a pink lotus. Furthermore, when she and Lucky joined in a game of hide-and-seek, Yun Yun suddenly noticed there was no stone mortar embedded into the earth floor, no farm tools propped against the walls.

  “Where can we hide?” she asked Lucky.

  “Under the bed.”

  They’d not crawled in very far when someone called out, “Old Granny’s here,” setting off a chorus of greetings.

  “Game’s over,” Lucky said, backing out.

  Yun Yun, coughing from the dust their hands and knees were scuffing up, scurried after Lucky. Emerging, they hurriedly scrambled to their feet, brushed off their palms and pants, straightened their side-fastened tunics’ wide sleeves and high collars, picked bits of dirt from each other’s pigtails and bangs.

  Across the room, the rest of the members—their pigtails, loose-fitting pants, and knee-length tunics similarly tidied—waited. The older girls were spread out on the two beds pushed against the wall, most of them sitting cross-legged on the straw bedmats, a few perched on the edge. The younger girls were settled on low stools in front of them. Dashing over, Yun Yun and Lucky dropped onto the last empty stools.

  Old Granny, as befitted a respected elder, was in the seat of honor, a carved blackwood chair that faced everyone. And since Old Granny was a friendly neighbor Yun Yun had known all her life, she smiled up at the face ploughed with wrinkles, half-expecting the gnarled hands to reach out, as they usually did, with a gift of rock sugar or roasted peanuts. Instead, they gripped the arms of the chair, and beneath her black headband, Old Granny’s shaggy eyebrows crossed in a frown so stern that Yun Yun, although seated beside Lucky, shrank within herself, bewildered and afraid.

  Hawking loudly into the spittoon by her feet, Old Granny began, “No bride goes to her husband willingly. That is why she weeps and why she must be shut up in the attic for three days and nights before her wedding—to keep her from running away.”

  One by one she spelled out the losses that a bride suffered. “She has to leave her family, her friends, all those who cherish her, every familiar person and place and thing, to go and live among strangers.”

  At each new loss, Yun Yun shuddered. Her skin prickled as eerily as if she were listening to a ghost story, and she sought comfort in the statue of Gwoon Yum. But fragrant smoke from the incense and candles on the altar wreathed the Goddess so that she, too, seemed distant and strange, a ghost. Sucking in her breath, Yun Yun turned back to Old Granny.

  “Do you understand?” Old Granny demanded, impaling Yun Yun, every one of the six younger girls, with a fierce stare. Even after Old Granny fixed her gaze on the eight older girls, Yun Yun felt its sting.

  “A bride is like a dead person about to cross the Yellow River into Hell,” Old Granny continued. “Her coffin is the sedan chair that carries her to her husband and her father-in-law, the King of Hell. If she couldn’t unleash her feelings in weeping songs, how could she bear it?”

  As if in answer, the older girls leaped to their feet. Beating their chests with their fists like mourners at a funeral, they cried:

  “My matchmaker,

  My death maker,

  I am dying.”

  Yun Yun swallowed hard. She had, of course, heard many a bride lament. Since they’d been in their houses or wedding sedans, however, Yun Yun had never seen their faces, never paid any mind to the words they chanted. Now, clutching Lucky’s arm, she gaped at the singers, listened closely.

  “My foot steps into the Yellow River,

  My heart beats sore at each further step …”

  “Louder,” Old Granny ordered. “Don’t hold back.”

  Immediately the girls shrilled higher. They not only beat their chests but raked their fingers through their hair, pulling loose their tightly bound pigtails. Yun Yun, caught up in their terrible keening, felt her nose and throat close as if she were being sucked into the dreaded Yellow River. Desperately she gulped air. She reminded herself that Lucky had earned her nickname because she had fallen into the river that wound through Twin Hills Village but had been saved from drowning by her father. Still Yun Yun could not breathe.

  Shutting out the girls by squeezing her eyes closed and clamping her hands over her ears, Yun Yun told herself that her father would also come to her rescue. But thinking of her father only made Yun Yun wish she were home with him, her mother and grandparents and little brothers, and she let loose a wail, a rush of tears.

  Beside her, Lucky began to sob. Long before the song’s end, all the girls were openly weeping.

  Midway through Mei Ju’s eighth summer, an angry red rash prickled across her palms. Strongworm Village was enjoying a bumper crop of lychee, and Mei Ju’s grandmother, claiming a connection between the itchy red spots and Mei Ju’s favorite fruit, immediately ordered her to hold back from eating more. Mei Ju, however, couldn’t resist peeling back the nubby brownish red skin and biting into the sweet, tender flesh whenever she thought no one was looking.

  Ma, noting the persistence of Mei Ju’s rash, fretted, “Maybe lychee aren’t the cause.”

  “Don’t even think of asking me to let the herbalist look at your nuisance child,” Grandmother snapped. “I’m not going to throw away hard-earned cash on clearing up a mere rash.”

  Pulling Mei Ju aside, Bak Ju whispered, “Sister, don’t peel the lychee yourself. Let me do it for you.”

  Astonished, Mei Ju blurted, “How did you know?”

  As if she were anointing her sister, Bak Ju rested her thumb lightly on Mei Ju’s wide-set eyes, shell-like ears, button nose, and itchy palms, the thick bangs covering her forehead, murmuring, “I looked, I listened, I smelled, I touched, I used my head. Just like Grandmother does. Just like she tells us we should.”

  “Grandmother didn’t find me out. You did.”

  “Grandmother would have,” Bak Ju defended. “It’s
just that she has so much more than you to worry about.”

  She did, Mei Ju acceded. For although Grandfather was head of the family, Grandmother made the decisions, not only for inside matters but for outside as well. Moreover, she accomplished this without leaving the house but one day a year: Ching Ming, the Clear Bright Festival for honoring ancestors. In truth, it seemed to Mei Ju that Grandmother, short and square, was like the high gentry who lived in towns and cities, never setting foot in the village, yet whose influence, Grandfather said, dominated the two councils on which he sat.

  The Wong clan’s Council of Elders governed seventeen families, almost a third of the village, and it met twice monthly to hear reports from those in charge of the clan’s genealogical records, accounts, and school; to consider necessary repairs to dikes on ancestral land, possible strategies for defense from bandits, requests from clan members in need of assistance for weddings and funerals; to settle disputes and mete out punishments. Strongworm’s Council of Elders, which included representatives from the Council of Elders for each of the village’s four clans, met less frequently. Grandfather participated in all these meetings. And Ba—whom Grandmother instructed to listen in as was the right of any adult male—reported that Grandfather always followed Grandmother’s directives unless the head of the council indicated they might be contrary to the desires of the gentry.

  In their family, no one overrode her. Grandmother established exactly who would stay home to mind the youngest children, go work in the fields and wormhouse, accompany Grandfather to market, or check on their dikes and fish ponds and fruit trees. Grandmother—after carefully questioning her three sons and daughters-in-law, studying the moon and the sky from their courtyard, sniffing the air, and feeling the winds—also decided which vegetables should be brought in from the fields to be cooked or pickled or sliced for drying; when to begin hatching the silkworm eggs for the start of a new season; how to apportion the silkworm waste for fish feed and fertilizer; whether their existing dikes required reinforcing, where new ones should be built.

  Mei Ju, then, knew Ma wouldn’t take her to the herbalist after Grandmother forbade it. Nor was there any need for the man since the rash cleared once Bak Ju started peeling lychee for her. And even better than saving her from the horrible itching, her older sister was making it possible for her to pass her evenings and nights away from home sooner than Mei Ju had dared hope, for Grandmother ruled, “Although there’s eighteen months between the two of you, you’ll join a girls’ house together.”