Determination’s Daughters

Kathryn Llewellyn
 

A girl’s head appears against the windowpanes of a large house in Tianjin. She thrusts the glass outward, letting the little breeze rustle and break the morning’s stagnant heat. At the same time on the other end of the house, her mother and father stir in their mahogany canopy bed, and her older sister, Yi Ze, opens her eyes and throws back the mosquito net encircling her straw sleeping mat. The girl, Li Hua, dresses and tiptoes outside to the courtyard, stopping at the wooden gate to peer out at the open market, slight smells of fried dough beginning to fill the air, and silken shawls quietly swishing and dancing in the breeze. She turns around quickly at her ah-mah’s shrill cry. Breakfast is ready.
            After breakfast, Li Hua’s father leaves for the teahouse, where he can discuss literature and the latest news with fellow intellectuals and townspeople. Li Hua stays behind with Yi Ze and her mother to sew.
             Yi Ze, who had turned fifteen the previous week, is preparing for her wedding to a young man in a neighboring village, a Mr. Cheng Chi Long. Their mother promptly summons a servant to measure Yi Ze and begin to sew her wedding chi-pao, for which several yards of blood red silk and golden cording had already been purchased. In a word, Yi Ze is a beautiful young woman, with sparkling dark eyes and shiny hair the color of ebony. Her skin is soft, the color of white porcelain with cheeks like peaches. A half-smile fleets across her rosebud lips, obviously a sign of her excitement for her wedding.

 Li Hua, who is thirteen, gazes critically at her sister under downcast eyelids. Mindless child, she thinks, Yi Ze may be two years older than me, but she acts with the intelligence of someone of four years younger. No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than Yi Ze began, “Oh, how exquisite my wedding will be! I can just smell the delicacies of the banquet feast. And I shall arrive in a painted rickshaw, and Chi Long will lift my red veil and see me in my beautiful chi-pao and flowers in my hair! Then afterward, I shall be carried out in a golden carriage to begin my new life. Chi Long will provide for me a comfortable home with many servants. He will drop precious rich green jade pieces into my hands, and we will have a child and live happily!” Li Hua grimaces at her foolish sister, wondering how she could care about such unimportant things when a more imminent threat lays ahead—marriage to a man she has never met before. And Li Hua suddenly remembers her own marriage, coming up in a year’s time, to a Kong Ye, the eldest son of a local army general.  How she is dreading the thought of being measured for a wedding dress, of having her eyes lined with blacked powder, cheeks sprinkled with rouge. How she dreaded arriving at her wedding—her funeral—and having Kong Ye pull back her veil—arriving at the gates of hell!
            But despite Li Hua’s increasing nervousness for her sister, the wedding preparations proceed, and Yi Ze is not worried. Surely the black curtain in front of her eyes is even thicker and darker than that of any blind person. She scurries around the house that morning, giddy, laughing like a little girl as several servants help her into her chi-pao. They then line her eyes in black powder and paint her lips red. They rouge her cheeks and pin up her hair in a swoop at the nape of her neck, placing yellow flowers on her head. As Li Hua’s heart cries for her sister, Yi Ze smiles at her reflection in the looking glass.
            The ceremony is uneventful, though Chi Long is completely unlike the handsome, strong husband that Yi Ze had imagined. In fact, Li Hua can see the fire in his eyes and a little rat of a mustache clawing at his pinched, down-turned lips. The celebratory dinner banquet is uneventful, too, Chi Long looking at his chopsticks, Yi Ze looking dreamily at him. To her sister’s belief and disbelief, Yi Ze overlooks his cold manners and remains tickled pink by her husband. And at the conclusion of the banquet, the rickshaw arrives to take Yi Ze to her new home. Li Hua accompanies her outside, gazing at her sister, bidding her a silent farewell. And then the drivers begin to walk, and Li Hua watches her sister being carried to her death. One of the rickshaw drivers catches Li Hua’s attention just as he exits from the corner of her eye. He looks steadily at the ground and then back at Yi Ze, shaking his head. She sees a wizened face and tough, tanned skin. His eyes are kindly, and Li Hua hopes that he will take her sister somewhere good.
            In the weeks after the wedding, Li Hua’s life continues as it had before, though she falls asleep every night wondering what Yi Ze is doing at the moment, until early one morning. From a fitful sleep, Li Hua is awakened by a soft tapping at the courtyard gate close to her bed. She scurries out of bed and cracks the gate open to see a familiar face staring back at her. The old rickshaw driver! “Wen Li Hua?” he asks, showing a mouth of gaps where teeth are missing. “Yes, what can I do for you?” replies the sleepy-eyed Li Hua. She is quite surprised to see him, hoping in a secret region of her heart that he is coming with news of her sister, but at the same time knowing that he isn’t. In a hushed voice, he replies, “Your sister has asked me to carry a message to you,” He glances over his shoulder, waiting for Li Hua’s response. “Well, what?” she asks in disbelief. The driver’s low voice shrinks to a hoarse whisper. “Your sister has told me that her life with Chi Long is no good. She says he hurts her every night, and his scratches mark her face. She no longer can eat—so fearful,” He pauses, looking from side to side. “She has grown frail and deathly skinny—and she wishes she were with you.” Li Hua stares back, dumbfounded yet not surprised. “Thank you,” she finally whispers back. “But, how did you—I mean how--” “I must go now. I have a delivery to make,” the man interrupts, scurrying off into the marketplace. Li Hua, still stunned, jumps at her ah-mah’s call. She slinks out her the room, pondering her sister’s predicament, making silent prayers. When Li Hua arrives in the doorway, she immediately sees why she has been summoned. A bolt of red cloth is on the floor, and a servant holds a measuring tape in her hand. Li Hua’s wedding gown.
            No, Li Hua thinks to herself as the servant wraps the tape around her waist, No! She begins to shake her head, slowly at first, then more vigorously. What compels her to defy to her pre-arranged marriage Li Hua doesn’t know—a strong inner force, maybe. Her mother watches, horrified from the corner where she is sitting and asks tensely, “What? Why do you do this?” Li Hua sits silently, looking at the floor thinking, I cannot, in my right mind succumb to this arranged marriage. I will not end up like Yi Ze—I will not have my life smashed by this Kong Ye! The servant drops the tape measure, and her mother stares back at her. “You ingrate of a daughter! Who do you think you are, questioning your marriage? You should feel lucky that your father and I have arranged a suitable marriage for you and that by now I have not thrown you onto the street!” Li Hua keeps her eyes on the ground, knowing that her mother doesn’t care about suitable, she just wants to get rid of her—to try and forget that she did not have sons. Li Hua’s mother is now in a complete rage. “Why you impertinent girl—apologize to me! Say you are sorry for questioning me! Why aren’t you more like your sister, eager appreciative of your marriage?” She was stupid, thinks Li Hua. “Don’t you care about loyalty to your family? Haven’t you ever heard of honor?” continues her mother, “How would it look if our daughter was an old maid? Huh, how would that make your father and I look?” I do care about loyalty to my family, but can’t I have loyalty to myself? Li Hua asks herself, still keeping her eyes glued to the ground, biting her lip. With that, Li Hua’s mother gets up and slaps her daughter in the face. Strangely, Li Hua is encouraged by the sting. At the same time, the rickshaw driver’s words echoing in her head, She can no longer eat…deathly skinny. And a picture forms in Li Hua’s mind. She and her sister are standing together, dressed in red wedding chi-paos. Yi Ze is skinny and subdued—like a ghost. Her lips are pinched in a frown, and her peach cheeks are not longer plump, scarred with her husband’s punches. Li Hua is looking at her sister, crying, her wedding makeup smearing in jagged lines from the tears. The rouge clumps together in what look like scratches, and the black eye makeup forms blotchy black bruises. Suddenly when Li Hua turns to look at the image of her sister, Yi Ze disappears, and Li Hua is violently awakened from her vision. In a heartbeat’s time, she grows fiercely determined to stop eating and turn skinny. The color would drain from her face, and she would be sick everyday. Not only would she and her sister suffer together, but if her mother-in-law came to visit before the wedding, she would see what a hideous-looking and frail future-daughter-in-law she has and decide not to carry on with the wedding. At this point, Li Hua’s mother storms out of the room, and Li Hua sits down in her chair to brood.
            The months pass by as Li Hua stealthily wanders the house by day, trying to avoid her mother. At night she prays for Yi Ze, hoping that she is not on the floor bowing to Chi Long. Her mother’s words echo in her heart—loyalty and family honor, though Li Hua’s vision of herself and her sister unwillingly dressed in wedding attire also creeps into her head. As she looks harder at Yi Ze’s shrunken figure and her own tears and imaginary scars, she toys with the idea of starving herself. Trying to displease her husband would be dishonoring her family, but by agreeing to marriage, Li Hua would be dishonoring herself. So as more time passes, Li Hua eats less and less, accompanied to the table by the shadow of her illusion until she barely eats half a bowl of plain rice and drinks no more than a cup of tea at each meal. She watches her reflection in the looking glass—skinnier and skinnier, sicklier and sicklier. But she is still strong inside—maybe even stronger than she had been before.
            Her mother looks on, disgusted, as does her ah-mah. “What are you doing to your body?” pesters the ah-mah. “You know your wedding is coming up soon—don’t you want to look nice?” Li Hua nods, frowning, letting the rickshaw driver’s voice fill her head. Her mother, too, pesters Li Hua, forcing chicken and vegetables down her throat sometimes, slapping her at others. The slaps’ sting is numbed as Li Hua plays back the image of her sister disappearing. But after weeks of this, her mother does nothing more to make Li Hua eat. Perhaps in a secret region of her heart, Li Hua’s mother knows that she will not be bothered by her daughter and that watching the child waste away to nothing and die will not greatly pain her. The mother could just forget that she had had a daughter.
            At the same time, Li Hua awaits anxiously any news of her sister. And one day, when Li Hua is feeling especially weak, a face appears at her bedroom window. “Yi Ze?” she asks, still hopeful. The face’s rosebud lips turn up ever so slightly, in a half-smile. “Yes, it’s me. I look a bit older, I guess. But you—how are you? You don’t look well.” Li Hua gazes back at her sister, barely recognizing her. Her once-soft cheeks are now marked with scratches and the purple remnants of bruises, the skin pulled taught over the cheekbones. Her eyes are dull, but opened wider than ever before. Although she isn’t more than seventeen, a wiry gray hair stands out on her scalp. “I have been fine,” says Li Hua. “But why do you seem so frail?” questions her sister, “Aren’t you preparing for your wedding?” Li Hua looks at Yi Ze and then to the wall. “I just have not been hungry. And it will bring great dishonor to our family, but…” Her voice trails off and her sister finishes her sentence in a barely-audible whisper, seemingly tripping over the words as though they were slicing into her tongue. “You do not want to get married.” “Well, no, that’s not it,” Li Hua pauses mid-lie and continues slowly. “Yes. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to be a victim of fate. And I was hoping that…” Li Hua chokes, putting her hand over her mouth, “That no one wants a starved wife.” Yi Ze stares intensely into her sister’s face. “You know that by doing this you are bringing shame to this household, no?” “I have thought over my decision carefully,” Li Hua stumbles over her thoughts, “And I believe that I am doing what is right.” A lone tear wells in her left eye as she waits for Ye Zi to speak. “Did you receive my message?” She asks. “I heard, and I have been praying for you everyday. How did you get here, though?” Li Hua drops the question that has been hanging in the air like the scent of death. Both sisters knew the answer at once. “Well, I stopped eating, or, rather, I couldn’t eat…too scared of Chi Long and his punches. I turned frail, ashen and ugly,” Her face crumples as she gropes for her words and then continues slowly as though the phrases made a bitter taste in her mouth. “I tried to stand up against Chi Long sometimes. I couldn’t seem to bear a child…no children meant that…” “No sons,” mouths Li Hua. “That was the last straw. The family promptly—asked me—no, they drove me out of their home, and the kindly rickshaw driver took me back here.” Tears are running down Yi Ze’s face now, making her scratches glisten red. “And I will have to break the news to Mother.” Yi Ze whispers that words that she has been dreading.

Li Hua can hear her mother’s muffled screams and Yi Ze’s sobs. She can hear her mother asking her sister the same questions of loyalty and honor that she had asked Li Hua months before. “How will this make our family look? What will the townspeople think of us?” When the vision comes into Li Hua’s head yet again, instead of disappearing, Yi Ze is being slapped senseless by her mother, cowering in the corner and falling over. Finally, Li Hua can hear her mother’s dejected footsteps stomping out of the room, and Yi Ze’s tear-lined face appears in the Li Hua’s doorway. Li Hua fears that her mother will banish Yi Ze, though her sister calms her fears between choking sobs. “I will stay!” Li Hua rushes over to her sister, holding her trembling skeleton tightly. “Shhhhh, Shhhhh,” she whispers. “We will go through this together.”
            Soon after Ye-Zi’s arrival home, the parents of Li Hua’s prospective husband visit. Li Hua’s mother greets them, smiling sweetly and exchanging pleasantries. After she serves them tea, she calls to Li Hua, who has dressed in her drabbest chi-pao. “This is my daughter, Wen Li Hua,” says her mother when Li Hua arrives in the doorway, holding back a grimace when she sees her daughter’s dress. Li Hua doesn’t smile nor bow to her future in-laws, and upon seeing the frail and seemingly impertinent girl, they leave. Her devastated mother screams crazily at the girl and in-laws, begging them to take her daughter, so at least one of her children is not a disgrace to the family. But they are already gone, and so is Li Hua, who has run to her room.
            A year passes, and Yi Ze and Li Hua are seamstresses, sewing clothes and shoes. They are confined to their rooms, as their mother refuses to lay eyes on them. The work is tiresome, and their fingers are blistered. Gossip has spread the story of the failed marriages and dishonorable daughters, and no one looks at them nor speaks to them. But they have one another to talk to. And at night, the sisters sew and whisper in the bedroom until the candle flickers and melts into nothing while their mother cries in her room—cries for her daughters, a lost generation.