God of Luck (2 page)
Rules of propriety forbade any demonstration of our affection except when we were alone. But they could not stop my eyes from seeking out my wife while I was bringing baskets of mulberry leaves into the family’s silkwormhouse, taking out the waste to feed the fish in our ponds, or sitting in our courtyard, smoking, talking to my brothers, playing with their children. And on those occasions I was reckless enough to let my stolen glances linger on Bo See’s wide, generous mouth, slender neck, sloping shoulders, delicate wrists, or long, supple fingers, the sparks of desire smoldering in me would crackle into blaze fast as a dry branch near a fire.
Once, about to stack dried mulberry branches in the kitchen for fuel, I chanced upon Bo See in the common room alone, setting up embroidery frames for herself and our sisters-in-law so they could begin their winter work. Usually the house was as crowded with family as it was cluttered with tools, large storage jars and sacks and baskets and chests. But Ba was in bed with a particularly bad attack of catarrh; Eldest Sister-in-law, exhausted from nursing him through the night, had been released to nap; Ma, now closeted with Ba, had told Second and Fourth Sisters-in-law to take outside any grandchild who wasn’t in the fields with my brothers or in school; and Third Sister-in-law had been assigned to go buy embroidery thread from the waterpeddlers.
My first thought was to invite Bo See into our sleeping room for play. But the few rooms in our house had been divided, then subdivided, as each of my four brothers and I married. None of the flimsy wood partitions reached the ceiling, and our sleeping room was adjacent to Ba’s.
Impulsively, I abandoned my chore, ripped off a button and, without removing my jacket, asked Bo See to sew it back on.
Her eyes glowing with a heat that matched my own, Bo See seized needle and thread, daringly suggested I unfasten the remaining buttons, murmuring, “That will make it easier.”
Although the autumn day was cool, my chest gleamed moistly from my exertions, and when Bo See, piercing the edge of my jacket with her needle, let her wrist slide across my skin while pulling the thread through, I shivered with excitement. Her fingers trembling, she plunged the needle back into the fabric—stabbed her finger.
Except for a sharp intake of breath, she made no sound as she extracted the needle. But I took her injured hand in mine, placed the wounded finger in my mouth, embraced it with my lips, caressed it with my tongue.
Then she did cry out. It was only a small sob, one of pleasure, not pain. . . .
“Wai!”
Our faces bright as the sun outside, we leaped apart. At the other end of the common room, Third Sister-in-law— her shock clearly as great as our own—dropped the chest of embroidery thread she was carrying onto the table with a thud. Quickly, I shrugged off my jacket as if that was what I’d been doing all along, handed it to Bo See.
“Thanks, I won’t wait,” I mumbled, bolting out through the kitchen into the courtyard.
Panting as though I’d run in from the fields, I collapsed in an untidy heap. Our chickens, terrified, flapped and squawked a hasty retreat. Too edgy to stay still, I jumped up, began snapping the slender branches of mulberry into more manageable lengths for the stove.
As I piled the broken branches against my bare chest, I felt every scrape, prick, and stab from the rough bark and sharply pointed twigs. Welcoming the punishment, I heaped the sticks high, carried them into the kitchen.
From inside the common room, I could hear my wife and sister-in-law over the loud pounding of my heart: Bo See was stammering an increasingly muddled explanation, Third Sister-in-law giggling ever harder. Long before day’s end, all four of our sisters-in-law and my brothers were laughing at us. Nor had they let up in the years since.
They were always joking that Bo See favored me while serving at meals. Then they’d twit me if I tried to defend her. They also teased whenever they saw us helping each other with a chore or if they caught me saving Bo See a slice of sweet fruit or bringing her a flower.
Our sisters-in-law once went so far as to ask Bo See, amidst titters, if the reason for our childlessness was because she drank from my rod. My brothers, no less bold, jovially advised me to stop weakening my seed through too frequent loveplay.
How Bo See and I envied women who openly lived together like husband and wife. These couples, as women, could express their affection for each other with the same impunity as good friends. No one raised so much as an eyebrow when they sat side-by-side, linked arms, or walked hand-in-hand in the streets, leaning into each other. Last year, one couple even decorated an altar to Gwoon Yum with love poems, then vowed before the Goddess, their kinfolk, and friends that they would never part.
Later, in the privacy of our sleeping room, Bo See and I had fed each other the couple’s sweet bridal cakes and dreamtalked of enjoying similar freedom ourselves. Now, bound and gagged in the bottom of my kidnappers’ boat, I vowed to Fook Sing Gung, the God of Luck, that if he helped restore me to my wife, I would be content with what we had, never again wish for more.
WHEN ACCOMPANYING BA or my brothers to market as a small boy, I could easily mark our journey by sounds and smells alone. Women’s chatter, the laughter and cries of children, the slap of clothes against rock would signify we were passing a village, and after I counted three, I’d listen for the waterwheel’s creak that marked the fork in the river. Then deliciously fragrant smoke from street vendors cooking over small clay stoves and the clash of cymbals, high-pitched fluting of pipes, and beating of gongs from street performers would herald our approach to town. Going home, the comforting aroma from the eucalyptus trees lining Strongworm’s riverbank would foretell our arrival.
Imprisoned beneath the planking of my kidnappers’ sampan, I realized that no matter how strong a smell managed to find its way through the cracks in the decking, the stink within would overpower it. And the dull throbbing in my head had long ago become a hammering that excluded all other sounds. I did, however, feel a series of jolts that suggested a poorly handled docking. Moments later, the board directly above my head rose into blinding light.
As I blinked, thick fingers dug into my arms and hauled me up. I didn’t need sight to know it was the two strongmen who held me fast. Squinting, I made out a lantern swinging from the wizened, long-robed kidnapper’s skeletal hand.
Suddenly, he lunged towards me, and in his lantern’s glow, I caught the glimmer of a knifeblade. Shrinking within, I let out a shriek that died in a horrible gurgle behind my wooden gag and swollen tongue.
His lips spread in a malicious leer; his eyes glittered like the knifepoint he was aiming at my throat. Bearing down until I jerked at its sharpness, he hissed, “Give us any—I repeat
any
trouble, and this will be your fate.”
“You don’t understand, my sister will ransom me!”
But it was I who did not understand. For although he had ripped the wooden gag from my mouth, I couldn’t utter anything louder or more articulate than strangled mewls. When he slashed the bindings from my wrists, my arms lacked any strength. Likewise, my feet and legs could not support me after they were freed.
Nor were we at a dock, as I had supposed, but alongside a vessel. I was forced to board by the strongmen lifting me from below while a pair above gripped my shoulders and arms, hoisted me over the side, and dragged me to an open hatch.
“Get below.”
“Be quick about it!”
Mindful of my kidnapper’s threat, I attempted to obey. But there was no lantern near, the moon in the night sky was young, and neither my eyes nor my benumbed feet could find a ladder.
The instant the strongmen released me, then, I fell. And the shock, the impact of ankles, knees, elbows, and skull hitting hardwood in quick succession was piercing.
In the pitch black hold, murmured warnings flitted like spirits.
“Move.”
“Get out of the way.”
“Hurry.”
I tried but could not. Hands fumbled against my pants, grabbed a leg, a corner of my jacket, a sleeve, a shoulder, then pulled me deeper into the darkness just as a body, tumbling through the hatch, slammed the deck with a jarring thud, a garbled grunt.
There were more whispered warnings. Sounds of shuffling, dragging. Sobs. Faint groans that were somehow all the more awful for being muted.
Another body toppled down.
No sooner did flesh and bone thump then a heavy grate clanged over the hatch. While it was yet reverberating, a metal bolt rasped. As it locked into place, the sobs intensified, and it seemed to me I heard Bo See’s cries as well as my own.
When matchmakers began approaching my parents with offers, my father refused to give them a hearing, saying, “I believe our Bo Bo has a nonmarrying fate.” He even declared, “Once Bo Bo becomes a sworn spinster, I’ll give her the rights of a son. While living, she can remain at home. After she dies, her spirit tablet will be placed on the family altar to be honored by future generations.”
The rest of our family supported his proposal with an enthusiasm many a daughter would envy. Having become “Bo Bo” only after I had increased our profits, I understood my family’s affection was more for my ability to raise healthy silkworms than for me. Besides, I wanted a husband to share my bed so I could have babies that would grow in my belly and suckle at my breasts.
To my relief, my father could not force me to become a sworn spinster. Those vows, a lifelong commitment to independence, must be made of a girl’s free will. Unlike spinsters who can simply exchange baskets of peanut-candies, honey, and other sweets to signify their desire to live together as husband and wife, however, custom prevented me from arranging a marriage for myself. Nor could I compel my parents to find a husband for me.
Or could I?
THERE WERE TWO fortunetellers in our village, one blind and the other sighted. Each used a different method of augury: The blind man made careful calculations based on a person’s month, day, and hour of birth; the sighted one divined fates with the help of a little black bird that he carried around in a dainty bamboo cage.
These fortunetellers operated in opposite corners of the temple courtyard. The blind man, on hearing a client’s particulars, raised his gnarled fingers one by one, pursed his lips, and stroked his beard thoughtfully before issuing his pronouncements. The sighted man folded papers of obscure text that he tossed into the air and let fall helter-skelter. Then he pressed his already flat nose against the narrow bars of the bamboo cage and, directing his bird to show him his client’s fate, he unlatched the gate.
Inside the cage, the bird would hop off its perch, flutter its wings, and fly through the opening. Once out, it might flit from paper to paper, study several with its head cocked, or select one instantly. Always, though, the bird would stab its beak between the folds of a paper, fly to its master, and the fortuneteller, unfolding the paper, would smooth out the creases, read the few lines of text out loud, and divine their meaning for that particular client.
I gave this fortuneteller two folded papers which required no interpretation beyond their color: white for the purity of spinsters; wedding red. I also ensured the bird’s choice by hiding grain in the folds of the red.
After the fortuneteller decreed I had a marrying fate, my parents stopped turning away matchmakers. But my father set my bride price so high that had it not been for Moongirl’s generosity, I might yet be unwed and raising silkworms for his profit. Certainly I wouldn’t have known the happiness of lying with Ah Lung, and I thanked the God of Luck daily for my good fortune.