Children rarely deal in the abstract, and you are no exception. You know Love in the way Mother runs her fingers through your braided locks, and you know Beauty through her, too—hair smooth and black as the river at night, skin bronze like the fields of sand that stretch as far as the eye can see.
“When I grow up, Mother,” you declare, “I would like to be as you are.”
You remember only bits and pieces of Father, fragments that, when slotted together, never quite make a coherent whole. But you never do try very hard, for there is little to desire outside the life Mother has crafted for you. Mornings, you feed the chickens and tend your garden. There is lemongrass, of course, and peppers and snow peas and scallions. But it is the flowers you care for. Mother points to each of them in turn.
“Sun Lily. Empress’s Thistle. Blue Mayapple… If you sing for them, they will sing for you.”
When you are old enough, Mother teaches you your characters. But you already know Horse and Jar and Empress’s Thistle, just as you know Love and Beauty. You know how they taste, you know how they sound, you know how they feel to the touch.
But Mother only smiles away your objections and says, “To capture a moment in words is to preserve it in resin.”
Paper and brush, stick and stone. Around and around you go. Your wrist hurts; you develop a crick in your neck. You have not the patience for these exercises of tedium. But you weather them all for Mother… and the trips that are promised at the close of each. Your lesson of the day over, Mother takes you to the edge of the forest, where a great banyan stands. Again and again, you climb its knotted limbs, lose your grip, and scrape your knees against the tree’s rough bark. But you are a daring child, with limitless energy, and it is not long before you manage to scale the first juncture.
You live with Mother in a cottage on the outskirts of a small village. Visitors rarely grace your doorstep. But it is neither fear nor scorn that deters villagers, merchants, and travelers alike; there is simply nothing to gain from venturing this far west, where the road eventually gives way to legions of shifting sand.
And yet, he comes. He, with his long, black locks and skin like white jade.
The first time you see his footprints in the dirt, you do not know what to do with yourself. For you know little of boys and even less of men. But you know flowers, and he picks them for you, white ones that perfume the room you share with Mother.
“Like honey,” you say.
“Like honey,” Mother agrees.
And you find, suddenly, that you have little need for anything else. The flowers in Mother’s garden pale in comparison, and as for the great banyan—you feel certain your conquest of it has finally come to an end. So you scrub the dirt from beneath your fingers; you spend hours oiling your knees to a shine; you avoid the sun like the plague.
Your wedding is a joyous occasion. Mother braids your hair and drapes you in robes red as the blood that spills from the pig they slaughter in your honor. That night, you lie beside him in that grand, old house of his and, long after he has drifted off, relive again and again your sweet love making. You knew what to do, then. Knew the way a body can come undone.
Mother came with you to live in this grand, old house. It is some consolation. The place is like a maze. There are more rooms than you ever could have thought possible, and you spend the first few days losing your way to the kitchen, thinking wistfully of the little cottage and the little life Mother spun for you.
But there is a pleasure, too—a certain thrill, of slipping from one echoing hall to the next, knowing all the while that this is yours.
It is a mild winter. The snow, when it arrives, does not remain for long. At breakfast, you serve Husband first, then pour cups of tea for Mother and yourself. You wait, patiently, for Husband to raise the cup to his lips, and only then do you inquire, “Have you seen my mother?”
Steam turns his eyes opaque. “She is out there, in the garden.”
You are seconds from taking your first sip of tea when Husband speaks once more. “You are fortunate not to have taken after her.”
When the steam clears, you follow the direction of his gaze out the window, and gasp. For you find that he is quite right; with her thin, scraggly hair, pockmarked skin, and dark, sunken eyes, Mother is a hideous sight. How in the world did you fail to notice? Heat creeps up your neck and floods your cheeks. How long have you been sharing your home with a monster?
At dinner that evening, Mother recounts a chance meeting in the garden with a curious squirrel.
“I thought they’d all gone to sleep for the winter. You should have seen him!” Mother chuckles. “I swear, he was as intelligent as any human child. He had such shen.”
“You shouldn’t laugh quite so much,” you blurt out. “Your teeth are rotting where they hang.”
Mother falls still. Husband brings a bowl of steaming rice to his lips. In the quiet that follows, you sigh your relief.
The midwife prescribes you a diet of bitter teas and broths.
“Nothing cold,” she warns, “unless you wish to be barren as the sand fields to the west.”
You grimace as the last spoonful of soup slides down your throat. You can feel Mother’s eyes on you. You wish she wouldn’t. She holds a hand over her lips. She has taken to doing so on the few occasions you speak.
“What?” Husband interrupts. “Mother, I cannot understand you. You must speak up.”
Mother wishes to tell us that the flowers have bloomed before their time, you think of saying. Instead, you fix your gaze on the opposite wall and reply, “It is nothing, Husband. It is nothing worth repeating.”