I looked through the branches of the bushes and in front I could see a crowd of people and, above them, a stage holding up the moon. A young man burst out from the side of a stage and told the crowd, "And now the Moon Lady will come and tell her sad tale to you, in a shadow play, classically sung."
One of the boys threw a raft made of hollow reed flutes into the water and then dove in and emerged on top of the raft. In a few seconds, the bird also emerged, its head struggling to hold onto a large fish. The bird jumped onto the raft and then tried to swallow the fish, but of course, with the ring around its neck, it could not. In one motion, the boy on the raft snatched the fish from the birds mouth and threw it to the other boy on the boat. I clapped my hands and the bird dove under water again.
On the dock, with the bright moon behind me, I once again saw my shadow. It was shorter this time, shrunken and wild-looking. We ran together over to some bushes along a walkway and hid. In this hiding place I could hear people talking as they walked by. I could hear frogs and crickets. And then—flutes and tinkling cymbals, a sounding gong and drums!
"It is the same as I explained yesterday," she said, lifting me out of my bed and setting me on her knee. And my sleepy mind tried to remember what she had told me upon waking the morning before.
"It is what you want but cannot ask," said Amah.
There was another smell, outside, something burning, a pungent fragrance that was half sweet and half bitter. "Whats that stinky smell?" I asked my amah, who always managed to appear next to my bed the instant I was awake. She slept on a cot in a little room next to mine.
That day, instead of dressing me in a light cotton jacket and loose trousers, Amah brought out a heavy yellow silk jacket and skirt outlined with black bands.
It was not until then, too late, that I saw my new clothes—and the spots of bloods, flecks of fish scales, bits of feather and mud. What a strange mind I had! In my panic, in hearing waking voices toward the front of the boat, I quickly dipped my hands in the bowl of turtles blood and smeared this on my sleeves, and on the front of my pants and jacket. And this is what I truly thought: that I could cover these spots by painting all my clothes crimson red, and that if I stood perfectly still no one would notice this change.
Even though Tai Lake is one of the largest in all of China, that day it seemed crowded with boats: rowboats, pedal boats, sailboats, fishing boats, and floating pavilions like ours. So we often passed other people leaning out to trail their hands in the cool water, some drifting by asleep beneath a cloth canopy or oil-coated umbrella.
At the rear of the boat we saw poor-looking people: a man feeding sticks into a tall chimney stove, a woman chopping vegetables, and two rough-looking boys squatting close to the edge of the boat, holding what looked to be a piece of string attached to a wire-mesh cage lying just below the surface of the water. They gave us not even a glance.
I was filled with terror. Maybe this was true. I had turned into a beggar girl, lost without my family.
Suddenly I heard people crying, "Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!" and I thought, At last, the day has begun! I raced to the pavilion and found aunts and uncles laughing as they used chopsticks to pick up dancing shrimp, still squirming in their shells, their tiny legs bristling. So this was what the mesh cage beneath the water had contained, freshwater shrimp, which my father was now dipping into a spicy bean-curd sauce and popping into his mouth with two bites and a swallow.
"Why cant I ask?"
She spun me around to inspect her handiwork. I was roasting in the lined silk jacket and pants obviously made with a cooler day in mind. My scalp was burning with the pain of Amahs attentions. What kind of day could be worth so much suffering?
"Anh! Dont you have eyes?" said the woman crossly. "Look at her skin, too pale. And her feet, the bottoms are soft."
Then everybody climbed into rickshaws, the younger children sitting next to their amahs. At the last moment, before we all set off, I wriggled out of Amahs grasp and jumped out of the rickshaw. I climbed into the rickshaw with my mother in it, which displeased Amah, because this was presumptuous behavior on my part and also because Amah loved me better than her own. She had given up her own child, a baby son, when her husband had died and she had come to our house to be my nursemaid. But I was very spoiled because of her; she had never taught me to think about her feelings. So I thought of Amah only as someone for my comfort, the way you might think of a fan in the summer or a heater in the winter, a blessing you appreciate and love only when it is no longer there.
The dripping man bent down and looked at me. "Oh, a little girl. Not a fish!"
Yet today I can remember a time when I ran and shouted, when I could not stand still. It is my earliest recollection: telling the Moon Lady my secret wish. And because I forgot what I wished for, that memory remained hidden from me all these many years.
We picked crumbs off one another, and after we finished our treat it grew quiet and once again I became restless. Suddenly I saw a dragonfly with a large crimson body and transparent wings. I leapt off the bench and ran to chase it, and my half-sisters followed me, jumping and thrusting their hands upward as it flew away.
All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my dhｔｔp://wwｗ.９９ｌｉb•netaughter does not see me. She sees a list of things to buy, her checkbook out of balance, her ashtray sitting crooked on a straight table.
"The Moon Lady! The Moon Lady!" I said, jumping up and down with great delight. And then, after I ceased to be amazed with the pleasant sounds of my voice saying new words, I tugged Amahs sleeve and asked: "Who is the Moon Lady?"
But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear, and loneliness. How I lost myself.
Wyah! Wyah! The sad lute music began again as the sky on the stage lightened. And there stood the poor lady against a moon as bright as the sun. Her hair was now so long it swept the floor, wiping up her tears. An eternity had passed since she last saw her husband, for this was her fate: to stay lost on the moon, forever seeking her own selfish wishes.
Earlier in the summer, the servants had covered all the windows with bamboo curtains to drive out the sun. Every bed was covered with a woven mat, our only bedding during the months of constant wet heat. And the hot bricks of the courtyard were crisscrossed with bamboo paths. Autumn had come, but without its cool mornings and evenings. And so the stale heat still remained in the shadows behind the curtains, heating up the acrid smells of my chamber pot, seeping into my pillow, chafing the back of my neck and puffing up my cheeks, so that I awoke that morning with a restless complaint.
And then, over the years, I forgot the rest of what happened that day: the pitiful story the Moon Lady sang, the pavilion boat, the bird with the ring on its neck, the tiny flowers blooming on my sleeve, the burning of the Five Evils.
But now I remember the wish, and I can recall the details of that entire day, as clearly as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life.
The Moon Lady! I thought, and the very sound of those magic words made me forget my troubles. I heard more cymbals and gongs and then a shadow of a woman appeared against the moon. Her hair was undone and she was combing it. She began to speak. Such a sweet, wailing voice!
"Chang-o. She lives on the moon and today is the only day you can see her and have a secret wish fulfilled."
I sat up and saw Amah was still asleep, lying askew on her sleeping mat. I wandered to the back of the boat. The rough-looking boys were removing a large, squawking long-necked bird from a bamboo cage. The bird had a metal ring around its neck. One boy held onto the bird, wrapping his arms around the birds wings. The other tied a thick rope to a loop on the metal neck ring. Then they released the bird and it swooped with a flurry of white wings, hovered over the edge of the boat, then sat on top of the shiny water. I walked over to the edge and looked at the bird. He looked back at me warily with one eye. Then the bird dove under the water and disappeared.
"Ai! But how can I rub a swollen foot?" lamented the old lady. "Both inside and outside have a sour painful feeling. Too tender to even touch!"
There were some shouts from the floating pavilion, and I strained to see faces of Amah, Baba, Mama. People were crowded on one side of the pavilion, leaning over, pointing, looking into our boat. All strangers, laughing red faces, loud voices. Where was Amah? Why did my mother not come? A little girl pushed her way through some legs.
It wrapped around me and squeezed my body like a sponge, then tossed me into the choking air—and I fell headlong into a rope net filled with writhing fish. Water gushed out of my throat, so that now I was choking and wailing.
"Dajya"—All the family—she said happily. "We are all going to Tai Lake. The family has rented a boat with a famous chef. And tonight at the ceremony you will see the Moon Lady."
"Ah! Did I not just explain?" said Amah. "Now that you have mentioned this to me, it is not a secret wish anymore."
And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.
"There!" I said, and pointed to a floating pavilion filled with laughing people and lanterns. "There! There!" And I began to cry, desperate to reach my family and be comforted. The fishing boat glided swiftly over, toward the good cooking smells.
I was surprised by the cool comfort of the water, so that at first I was not frightened. It was like weightless sleep. And I expected Amah to come immediately and pick me up. But in the instant that I began to choke, I knew she would not come. I thrashed my arms and legs under the water. The sharp water had swum up my nose, into my throat and eyes, and this made me thrash even harder. "Amah!" I tried to cry and I was so angry at her for abandoning me, for making me wait and suffer unnecessarily. And then a dark shape brushed by me and I knew it was one of the Five Evils, a swimming snake.
And then I heard Amah calling me again. "Ying-ying! It is time. Are you ready to go to the lake?" I nodded my head and began to run toward her, my self running ahead. "Slowly, go slowly," admonished Amah.
"…Autumn moon warms. O! Geese shadows return." Baba was reciting a long poem he had deciphered from ancient stone inscriptions.
"Thats not me!" she cried. "Im here. I didnt fall in the water." The people in the boat roared with laughter and turned away.
"Me better," said Number Three to Numb99lib•neter Two.
"What is a ceremony?" I asked as Amah slipped the jacket over my cotton undergarments.
"Sister likes me better," said Number Two to Number Three.
It is easy to forget about a boat when you have a rabbit mooncake in your hand. The three of us walked quickly out of the room, and as soon as we passed through the moongate that led to the inner courtyard, we tumbled and shrieked, running to see who could get to the stone bench first. I was the biggest, so I sat in the shady part, where the stone slab was cool. My half-sisters sat in the sun. I broke off a rabbit ear for each of them. The ears were just dough, no sweet filling or egg yolk inside, but my half-sisters were too little to know any better.
Mama was telling my aunt and the old ladies how to mix various herbs and insects to produce a balm: "This you rub here, between these two spots. Rub it vigorously until your skin heats and the achiness is burned out."
And now a fairy—the Queen Mother of the Western Skies!—was flying toward the Master Archer. She opened a box and held up a glowing ball—no, not a baby sun but a magic peach, the peach of everlasting life! I could see the Moon Lady pretending to be busy with her embroidery, but she was watching her husband. She saw him hide the peach in a box. And then the Master Archer raised his bow and vowed to fast for one year to show he had the patience to live forever. And after he ran off, the Moon Lady wasted not one moment to find the peach and eat it!
I saw her, standing still for just a moment. She was beautiful, ablaze with the light from a dozen kerosene lamps. And then she shook her long shadowy tresses and began to walk down the steps.
When I turned my head, I saw four shadows, with the moon in back of them. A dripping figure was climbing into the boat. "Is it too small? Should we throw it back? Or is it worth some money?" said the dripping man, panting. And the others laughed. I became quiet. I knew who these people were. When Amah and I passed people like these in the streets, she would put her hands over my eyes and ears.
"Dont make trouble," I said to them both. I ate the rabbits body, rolling my tongue over my lips to lick off the sticky bean paste.
I bowed my head with a pout. I noticed the black bands on my sleeves, the tiny embroidered peonies growing from curlicues of gold thread. I remembered watching my mother pushing a silver needle in and out, gently nudging flowers and leaves and vines to bloom on the cloth.
As soon as she tasted it, she began to rise, then fly—not like the Queen Mother—but like a dragonfly with broken wings. "Flung from this earth by my own wantonness!" she cried just as her husband dashed back home, shouting, "Thief! Life-stealing wife!" He picked up his bow, aimed an arrow at his wife and—with the rumblings of a gong, the sky went black.
But the excitement soon waned, and the afternoon seemed to pass like any other at home. The same listlessness after the meal. A little drowsy gossip with hot tea. Amah telling me to lie down on my mat. The quiet as everyone slept through the hottest part of the day.
"What kind of punishment?" I asked boldly.
A gong sounded, and the Moon Lady bowed her head and looked serenely to the side. The crowd clapped vigorously. And now the same young man as before came out on the stage and announced, "Wait, everybody! The Moon Lady has consented to grant one secret wish to each person here…." The crowd stirred with excitement, people murmuring in high voices. "For a small monetary donation…" continued the young man. And the crowd laughed and groaned, then began to disperse. The young man shouted, "A once-a-year opportunity!" But nobody was listening to him, except my shadow and me in the bushes.
My father responded with the line: "Mist flowers radiant. O!…"
"Stop now," scolded the woman in the boat, "youve frightened her. She thinks were brigands who are going to sell her for a slave." And then she said in a gentle voice, "Where are you from, little sister?"
Satisfied at last, I immediately said: "Then I will tell her I dont want to wear these clothes anymore."
In 1918, the year that I was four, the Moon Festival arrived during an autumn in Wushi that was unusually hot, terribly hot. When I awoke that morning, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the straw mat covering my bed was already sticky. Everything in the room smelled of wet grass simmering in the heat.
Standing perfectly still like that, I discovered my shadow. At first it was just a dark spot on the bamboo mats that covered the courtyard bricks. It had short legs and long arms, a dark coiled braid just like mine. When I shook my head, it shook its head. We flapped our arms. We raised one leg. I turned to walk away and it followed me. I turned back around quickly and it faced me. I lifted the bamboo mat to see if I could peel off my shadow, but it was under the mat, on the brick. I shrieked with delight at my shadows own cleverness. I ran to the shade under the tree, watching my shadow chase me. It disappeared. I loved my shadow, this dark side of me that had my same restless nature.
"Too many questions!" cried Amah. "You do not need to understand. Just behave, follow your mothers example. Light the incense, make an offering to the moon, bow your head. Do not shame me, Ying-ying."
I sighed over and over again every time they started a new topic. Amah finally noticed me and gave me a mooncake in the shape of a rabbit. She said I could sit in the courtyard and eat it with my two little half-s九*九*藏*书*网isters, Number Two and Number Three.
When it was our turn, Amah grasped my hand tightly and we bounced across the plank. But as soon as my feet touched the deck, I sprang free and, together with Number Two and Number Three, I pushed my way past peoples legs enclosed in billows of dark and bright silk clothes—trying to see who would be the first to run the length of the boat.
"It is a proper way to behave. You do this and that, so the gods do not punish you," said Amah as she fastened my frog clasps.
We returned to the front of the boat, just in time to see the dock moving away from us. Mama and the other ladies were already seated on benches around the pavilion, fanning themselves furiously and slapping the sides of each others heads when mosquitoes lighted. Baba and Uncle were leaning over a rail, talking in deep, serious voices. My brother and some of his boy cousins had found a long bamboo stick and were poking the water as if they could make the boat go faster. The servants were seated in a cluster at the front, heating water for tea, shelling roasted gingko nuts, and emptying out hampers of food for a noonday meal of cold dishes.
The crowd moved closer. The Moon Lady plucked her lute and began her singing tale.
"Ying-ying!" I heard Amah call, and Number Two and Number Three ran off. Amah was standing in the courtyard and my mother and the other ladies were now coming through the moongate. Amah rushed over and bent down to smooth my yellow jacket. "Syin yifu! Yidafadwo!"—Your new clothes! Everything, all over the place!—she cried in a show of distress.
The servants had already packed and loaded a rickshaw with the days basic provisions: a woven hamper filled with zong zi—the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, some filled with roasted ham, some with sweet lotus seeds; a small stove for boiling water for hot tea; another hamper containing cups and bowls and chopsticks; a cotton sack of apples, pomegranates, and pears; sweaty earthen jars of preserved meats and vegetables; stacks of red boxes lined with four mooncakes each; and of course, sleeping mats for our afternoon nap.
I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.
"For woman is yin," she cried sadly, "the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds."
I listened to their banquet while dangling my legs over the back. And although it was night, it was bright outside. I could see my reflection, my legs, my hands leaning on the edge, and my face. And above my head, I saw why it was so bright. In the dark water, I could see the full moon, a moon so warm and big it looked like the sun. And I turned around so I could find the Moon Lady and tell her my secret wish. But right at that moment, everybody else must have seen her too. Because firecrackers exploded, and I fell into the water not even hearing my own splash.
I had truly expected my mother to come soon. I imagined her seeing my soiled clothes, the little flowers she had worked so hard to make. I thought she would come to the back of the boat and scold me in her gentle way. But she did not come. Oh, once I heard some footsteps, but I saw only the faces of my half-sisters pressed to the door window. They looked at me wide-eyed, pointed to me, and then laughed and scampered off.
"Ai! You ask too much already! You can ask her because she is not an ordinary person."
"This is because…because if you ask it…it is no longer a wish but a selfish desire," said Amah. "Havent I taught you—that it is wrong to think of your own needs? A girl can never ask, only listen."
"Little sister, you were mistaken," said the woman as the fishing boat glided away. I said nothing. I began to shiver again. I had seen nobody who cared that I was missing. I looked out over the water at the hundreds of dancing lanterns. Firecrackers were exploding and I could hear more people laughing. The farther we glided, the bigger the world became. And I now felt I was lost forever.
The Moon Lady clutched her throat and fell into a heap, crying, "The drought of ten suns in the eastern sky!" And just as she sang this, the Master Archer pointed his magic arrows and shot down nine suns which burst open with blood. "Sinking into a simmering sea!" she sang happily, and I could hear these suns sizzling and crackling in death.
For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid.
I opened a heavy door leading into the garden house and ran past a room that looked like a large sitting area. My sisters followed behind laughing. Through another door, I saw people in a kitchen. A man holding a big cleaver turned and saw us, then called to us, as we shyly smiled and backed away.
On the other side of the moon I saw the silhouette of a man appear. The Moon Lady held her arms out to embrace him—"O! Hou Yi, my husband, Master Archer of the Skies!" she sang. But her husband did not seem to notice her. He was gazing at the sky. And as the sky grew brighter, his mouth began to open wide—in horror or delight, I could not tell.
"My fate and my penance," she began to lament, pulling her long fingers through her hair, "to live here on the moon, while my husband lives on the sun. So that each九九藏书网 day and each night, we pass each other, never seeing one another, except this one evening, the night of the mid-autumn moon."
Ying-Ying St. Clair
At the end of her singing tale, I was crying, shaking with despair. Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief. In one small moment, we had both lost the world, and there was no way to get it back.
"Then how will the Moon Lady know my wish?"
Amah tried to pull a wide comb through my hair and I pretended to tumble off the stool as soon as she reached a knot.
"Not a fish! Not a fish!" murmured the others, chuckling.
Our entire family was already standing outside, chatting excitedly. Everybody was dressed in important-looking clothes. Baba was in a new brown-colored gown, which while plain was of an obviously fine-quality silk weave and workmanship. Mama had on a jacket and skirt with colors that were the reverse of mine: black silk with yellow bands. My half-sisters wore rose-colored tunics and so did their mothers, my fathers concubines. My older brother had on a blue jacket embroidered with shapes resembling Buddha scepters for long life. Even the old ladies had put on their best clothes to celebrate: Mamas aunt, Babas mother and her cousin, and Great-uncles fat wife, who still plucked her forehead bald and always walked as if she were crossing a slippery stream, two tiny steps and then a scared look.
My mother smiled and walked over to me. She smoothed some of my wayward hairs back in place and tucked them into my coiled braid. "A boy can run and chase dragonflies, because that is his nature," she said. "But a girl should stand still. If you are still for a very long time, a dragonfly will no longer see you. Then it will come to you and hide in the comfort of your shadow." The old ladies clucked in agreement and then they all left me in the middle of the hot courtyard.
"Ah, but fortunately," said my uncle, his eyes twinkling, "you are a dedicated scholar of ancient history and literature. You were able to solve it, I think."
"What is a secret wish?"
During the morning meal nobody seemed in a hurry to go to the lake; this person and that always eating one more thing. And after breakfast everybody kept talking about things of little consequence. I grew more worried and unhappy by the minute.
"I have a wish! I have one!" I shouted as I ran forward in my bare feet. But the young man paid no attention to me and walked off the stage. I kept running toward the moon to tell the Moon Lady what I wanted, because now I knew what my wish was. I darted fast as a lizard behind the stage, to the other side of the moon.
I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
"Such a night!" sighed another man. "Always someone falling in on holiday nights. Drunken poets and little children. Lucky she didnt drown." They chatted like this, back and forth, moving slowly toward shore. One man pushed the boat with a long bamboo pole and we glided between other boats. When we reached the dock, the man who had fished me out of the water lifted me out of the boat with his fishy-smelling hands.
"Do not pay any attention to them," said the woman. "Are you from another fishing boat? Which one? Do not be afraid. Point."
"And burning your eyes!" exclaimed my great-aunt.
"No time to play today," said Amah, opening the lined jacket. "Your mother has made you new tiger clothes for the Moon Festival…." She lifted me into the pants. "Very important day, and now you are a big girl, so you can go to the ceremony."
It would have been enough to see this one adventure. But I stayed, as if caught in a good dream. And sure enough, I turned around and a sullen woman was now squatting in front of the bucket of fish. I watched as she took out a sharp, thin knife and began to slice open the fish bellies, pulling out the red slippery insides and throwing them over her shoulder into the lake. I saw her scrape off the fish scales, which flew in the air like shards of glass. And then there were two chickens that no longer gurgled after their heads were chopped off. And a big snapping turtle that stretched out its neck to bite a stick, and—whuck!—off fell its head. And dark masses of thin freshwater eels, swimming furiously in a pot. Then the woman carried everything, without a word, into the kitchen. And there was nothing else to see.
For the next hour, while Amah and everybody else slept, I watched like a hungry cat waiting its turn, as fish after fish appeared in the birds beak only to land in a wooden pail on the boat. Then the boy in the water cried to the other, "Enough!" and the boy on the boat shouted to someone high atop the part of the boat I could not see. And loud clanks and hissing sounds erupted as once again the boat began to move. Then the boy next to me dove into the water. Both boys got on the raft and crouched in the middle like two birds perched on a branch. I waved to them, envying their carefree ways, and soon they were far away, a little yellow spot bobbing on the water.
"Stand still, Ying-ying!" she cried, her usual lament, while I giggled and wobbled on the stool. And then she yanked the full length of my hair like the reins of a horse and before I could fall off the stool again, she quickly twisted my hair into a single braid off to the side, weaving into it five strands of colorful silk. She wound my braid into a tight ball, then arranged and snipped the loose silk strands until they九-九-藏-书-网 fell into a neat tassel.
The woman continued to stare at me. My braid was unfurled. My undergarments were wet and gray. I had lost my slippers and was barefoot.
I loved the unsteady feeling of almost falling one way then another. Red lanterns hanging from the roof and railings swayed, as if pushed by a breeze. My half-sisters and I ran our fingers over benches and small tables in the pavilion. We traced our fingers over the patterns of the ornamental wood railings and poked our faces through openings to see the water below. And then there were more things to find!
And then I heard voices in the courtyard. Standing on my stool, I strained to find them. Somebody was complaining about the heat: "…feel my arm, steamed soft clear to the bone." Many relatives from the north had arrived for the Moon Festival and were staying for the week.
"Be careful next time, little sister," called the woman as their boat glided away.
"Maybe she is a beggar girl," said one of the men. "Look at her clothes. She is one of those children who ride the flimsy rafts to beg for money."
"It is the heat," complained another old auntie. "Cooking all your flesh dry and brittle."
For many years, I could not remember what I wanted that night from the Moon Lady, or how it was that I was found again by my family. Both of these things seemed an illusion to me, a wish granted that could not be trusted. And so even though I was found—later that night after Amah, Baba, Uncle, and the others shouted for me along the waterway—I never believed my family found the same girl.
That is how Amah found me: an apparition covered with blood. I can still hear her voice, screaming in terror, running over to see what pieces of my body were missing, what leaky holes had appeared. And when she found nothing, after inspecting my ears and my nose and counting my fingers, she called me names, using words I had never heard before. But they sounded evil, the way she hurled and spat the words out. She yanked off my jacket, pulled off my pants. She said I smelled like "something evil this" and I looked like "something evil that." Her voice was trembling not so much with anger as with fear. "Your mother, now she will be glad to wash her hands of you," Amah said with great remorse. "She will banish us both to Kunming." And then I was truly frightened, because I had heard that Kunming was so far away nobody ever came to visit, and that it was a wild place surrounded by a stone forest ruled by monkeys. Amah left me crying on the back of the boat, standing in my white cotton undergarments and tiger slippers.
I began to shiver, too scared to cry. The air smelled dangerous, the sharp odors of gunpowder and fish.
"I have a wish," I said in a whisper, and still she did not hear me. So I walked closer yet, until I could see the face of the Moon Lady: shrunken cheeks, a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and red-stained eyes. A face so tired that she wearily pulled off her hair, her long gown fell from her shoulders. And as the secret wish fell from my lips, the Moon Lady looked at me and became a man.
"What shall we do?" said one of the men quietly. "Nobody to claim her."
"Put her on the shore, then," said the man. "If she truly has a family, they will look for her there."
"E!" called the woman up to the boat. "Have you lost a little girl, a girl who fell in the water?"
"We are burning the Five Evils," I said drowsily, then squirmed out of her warm lap. I climbed on top of a little stool and looked out the window into the courtyard below. I saw a green coil curled in the shape of a snake, with a tail that billowed yellow smoke. The other day, Amah had shown me that the snake had come out of a colorful box decorated with five evil creatures: a swimming snake, a jumping scorpion, a flying centipede, a dropping-down spider, and a springing lizard. The bite of any one of these creatures could kill a child, explained Amah. So I was relieved to think we had caught the Five Evils and were burning their corpses. I didnt know the green coil was merely incense used to chase away mosquitoes and small flies.
Out on the water I saw rowboats and pedal boats and sailboats, and fishing boats like this one, with a long bow and small house in the middle. I looked hard, my heart beating fast.
The water had turned a deep golden color, and then red, purple, and finally black. The sky had darkened and red lantern lights started to glow all over the lake. I could hear people talking and laughing, some voices from the front of our boat, some from other boats next to us. And then I heard the wooden kitchen door banging open and shut and the air filled with good rich smells. The voices from the pavilion cried in happy disbelief, "Ai! Look at this! And this!" I was hungry to be there.
When we arrived at the lake, I was disappointed to feel no cooling breezes. Our rickshaw pullers were soaked with sweat and their mouths were open and panting like horses. At the dock, I watched as the old ladies and men started climbing aboard a large boat our family had rented. The boat looked like a floating teahouse, with an open-air pavilion larger than the one in our courtyard. It had many red columns and a peaked tile roof, and behind that what looked like a garden house with round windows.
"The third word in the next line," explained Baba, "was worn off the slab, its meaning washed away by centuries of rain, almost lost to posterity forever."
"Pretty," pronounced Amah, even though I wore a scowl on my face.