No Need to Catch the Blooms on the Way Home

On the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month, grandmother and granddaughter waited at Nanpu for the boat home. With the current, a single push was enough to get off the bank, but a boat going upstream had to wait for the wind. The boatman watched the color of the water and made the passengers wait half a day longer before calling them aboard. Shen Su sat by the landing eating a rice cake. This time she made a point of buying only half and finishing it hot, so there would be no hard lump wrapped up for Achun. Gu Qing saw a white crumb at the corner of her mouth and pointed to it. The old woman wiped it away herself.

Pang Yun didn't come to see them off. Her nephew came running up with two scraps left over from the flowers Gu Qing had made for the inn. His aunt had asked him to give them back to her, he said. Even pieces this small could be used for patches. Gu Qing took the two familiar bits of old curtain hem and laughed, saying they had belonged to the Pang family in the first place. The boy said his aunt said that once they'd had flowers sewn on them, things were different. Gu Qing stopped trying to give them back, slipped them into her sewing pouch, and asked him to give his aunt her regards.

As they left shore, Shen Su looked back for a while at Nanpu's rooftops. After some time, she asked Gu Qing what she had not yet seen. She answered that there were still the main street, the bridge outside the temple, and the night market people praised; she had explored none of them fully. The old woman felt some regret, and Gu Qing did too, but neither said they should stay. They had walked where they could. The places left over would not vanish from the shore because they had not visited them; other strangers would keep walking into them in the days ahead.

The cabin was more crowded on the way back. A woman holding an empty cake box sat across from Gu Qing with a gray-blue flower pinned to the side of her hat. At first Gu Qing looked only at where it was fastened. The longer she looked, the more familiar it seemed. One petal curled outward, with a little loop hidden beneath the lower edge, and the shape was crisper than Xiaoman's first flower. She wanted to lean closer but was afraid of being rude, so she waited until the woman raised her hand to steady the hat before asking where she'd bought it.

The woman said she had bought it at the Fei family's hat shop in Yunjin. Miss Dong, who had started making their flowers, was clever with her hands, and the gray-blue was easier on the eye than a plain blue. She had bought it to wear to her younger sister's birthday dinner and was on her way home now. At the name Miss Dong, Gu Qing's fingers went to the sewing pouch at her sleeve without thinking, as if she might take out a needle and see whose alterations were on the back of that clasp. The thought passed in a flash. She lowered her hand and simply said she knew Miss Dong, and the flower really was well made.

The woman took off her hat to show her. Inside was a little label that said the design was by Dong Xiaoman, with a separate note beside it saying the fastening had been revised by Gu Qing. The writing was small and the label was sewn to the edge of the lining, where no one could see it without turning the lining back. She stared at her own name, felt a rush of warmth, then felt a little ashamed. They hadn’t taken the chance to erase her small part while she was away after all. The woman asked if that was her. Gu Qing said yes, then showed her exactly where she could put in a stitch herself if the thread ever loosened, saving her a walk halfway across town over a single clasp.

Shen Su was dozing beside her. Waking only in time to hear the latter half, she asked what work Gu Qing was taking on along the road now. Gu Qing smiled and said she was not taking any; she had seen a flower she knew. The old woman glanced at the gray-blue blossom and said this one was better than the blue steamed bun she had made. The woman opposite did not understand. Gu Qing offered no explanation, but her ears reddened, and she turned to look at the water. The little thorn of fear that she might be replaced suddenly felt much shorter.

On the twenty-eighth, the wind was against them and the boat moved very slowly. On shore, the towmen took one step after another, their footprints soon muddled by the water those behind them tracked over them. Gu Qing had meant to count off the stops each day according to the boatman’s directions. By afternoon she found the counting only made her more impatient, so she folded up her itinerary. When the old woman was awake she mostly watched the water, and when she was sleepy she slept. Her right knee still needed a hot compress every evening. Seeing the lotus flowers hadn’t spared her a single one.

That night a passenger took issue with how fussy they were about hot water. The old woman had been perfectly well at home, he muttered, so why come all this way to suffer? Shen Su was wringing out a cloth. She heard him without taking up the quarrel and said only that at home she hadn't tasted those thin cakes, and that made the trip worthwhile. The man was taken aback. He'd expected a speech about a rare chance to show devotion to one's elders and got a cake instead. He smiled and said no more. Gu Qing turned her face away and washed the empty bowl over and over, her shoulders trembling slightly.

They reached Liuwan on the twenty-ninth, and the boat stopped to wait out a surge from upstream. There was a tea stall on the bank. Gu Qing helped her grandmother to a seat inside and ordered hot water and two bowls of noodles, without getting a whole spread to satisfy their cravings while they waited. The noodles came with a few fresh scallions. Shen Su complained that the broth was blander than Nanpu's, then that the noodles she'd once had in Yunjin were too hard. Gu Qing asked whether every place had to lose out to some other place. The old woman laughed and admitted it outright, saying she'd seen so much by now that her tongue was bound to turn sharp.

At the tea stall they ran into the couple who sold combs, whom they'd met on the way down. The couple had finished their business in Nanpu and taken an earlier boat back, but it too had stopped here. The woman recognized Shen Su and asked first if she had seen the flowers. This time the old woman made no show of indifference. Talking and gesturing, she told her the first bloom was nearly spent and the half-open one was very pale, quite unlike the red in the pictures of flowers. The woman nodded as she listened and remarked that the lotus leaves in her own pond always got in the ducks' way, though she'd never looked closely at them.

In the middle of the lively talk, Shen Su suddenly stopped and laughed at herself. She'd turned out just like Sister Ji in those days, able to talk half the day after seeing a little water. Gu Qing knew who she meant and poured her grandmother more water, letting her talk on. The other woman asked whether the half-open blossom had ever opened all the way. Shen Su answered in earnest that she didn't know. She hadn't gone back in to see before leaving. Then she looked out over the river. She had less to say now, though her eyes still held that little gleam.

On the first day of the sixth month, rain drummed on the boat’s canopy for half the night. Gu Qing dreamed that water was rising by their well. When she woke with a start, her hand was already reaching for her shoes. The cabin was dark, and the boat was still tied securely at a sheltered landing. It was only when she heard her grandmother breathing that she knew she wasn't in Huai Lane. She sat up awhile, looking out toward the bank she couldn't see, wondering whether Auntie Chen had checked the drain and whether Sister Ma had finished handing over the keys. One thought followed another, and none of them could be dealt with by putting on her shoes just then.

The old woman woke and asked if she was thinking about the tree again. Gu Qing admitted she was, and said she was also wondering whether the flower cabinet might get damp. Shen Su moved over a little under the quilt and made room for her to lean close. She said she thought about it too. She’d even dreamed that Auntie Chen had planted spicy radishes by the well as if they were flowers. Gu Qing laughed aloud, then quieted down for fear of waking anyone. The two sat in the damp night thinking of home, letting themselves miss it even after learning to let go. Only when the rain eased did they fall asleep again.

On the second, the wind shifted and the boat picked up speed for a stretch. People were drying cloth on the bank, long lengths brushing the shadows of the trees. Gu Qing stared at a piece of pale apricot and for some reason thought of herself buying a hair ribbon in Nanpu. She touched the tail of the ribbon. The knot she had tied when they left had come loose several times, and she had tied it herself each time. With her clothes wrinkled and her face tanned from the journey, she kept it out of the bottom of her bag and smoothed it once more in clean water.

On the third they went ashore at Shixian to walk for an hour. Luo Yi was away, but the woman helping in the shop recognized Gu Qing and brought out a scent box whose flower fasteners had all sold. The boxed flowers had worked well, she said, though they'd have to wait for the proprietor to discuss next season. Gu Qing glanced at the worn edge of the box and asked whether the flowers caught on people's clothes. The woman hadn't heard any complaints, which set Gu Qing at ease. She didn't ask for a future quantity in writing there and then or fill the woman in on whom she'd made the journey for simply because she didn't know her grandmother.

After they left the shop, Shen Su stopped by the bridge to watch someone taking apart a broken umbrella, intent on the work. The ribs made Gu Qing think of the windows in Zhou Jiping’s new shop, and she felt a fresh urge to get back sooner. She didn’t pull the old woman along. She stood beside her and watched until it was done before saying they still had a way to walk to catch the next boat. Shen Su got up, settled her hat firmly on her head, and walked over to her on her own.

On the fourth, the boat went so slowly it got on their nerves. A woman sharing their cabin took out a cake box. The cakes were gone, but inside she had tucked a few round stones that her sister’s children had asked her to bring back. They lined the stones up and took turns guessing which one someone was hiding in her palm. Shen Su could scarcely see them at first, so Gu Qing deliberately gave her the darkest one. The old woman frowned and told her to stop going easy on her. A wrong guess wouldn’t cost her the boat fare. Gu Qing had to mix the stones back in as before and promptly lost twice in a row.

They laughed in the narrow cabin until the boat operator poked their head in to see what was happening. Shen Su put the last shiny stone into Gu Qing’s palm, making sure she saw it, then closed her hand and asked if she would guess wrong again this time. Gu Qing looked at the knobby fingers and deliberately guessed the other hand. In her haste, the old woman opened her palm and the stone fell onto the quilt. They both went to pick it up and gently knocked foreheads. The pain lasted an instant, but the laughter carried them all the way to supper, and even the bland, soft boat food went down a little easier.

On the night of the fifth, the lights outside the city were already faintly visible, but the boatman still meant to stop overnight at the lower landing and cross the final stretch of shallow water the next day. Looking into the distance, Gu Qing thought for a moment of hiring another small boat and going straight home. Then she felt the weight of her grandmother resting on her arm and said nothing. She settled against the wooden post, letting that small light break into fragments on the water. Being close did not mean they had to arrive tonight.

They reached the Yunjin landing at dusk on the sixth, after exactly nine days on the water. Gu Qing paid the balance of the three hundred and twenty coins for the return journey. There was little left, but enough to spend another night on shore. Shen Su's feet were swollen and the tops of her shoes had left a deep mark. Gu Qing led her straight to the travelers' inn she'd asked about before, without asking her to try to make it home. When the innkeeper heard they wanted a room for one night, he asked casually whether home was far. Gu Qing said it was close and they would go on in the morning. The words came even more easily than when she had changed rooms in Nanpu.

Outside the window came the familiar cries of Yunjin, the calls of the griddle-cake sellers and the sounds of shoulder poles, each from its old spot. Grandmother opened the gray lotus box. The petals inside had bent a little under pressure, but they were still mostly intact. Gu Qing cut a strip from the scrap of old cloth Pang Yun had given her and tucked it under the lower petal. The old woman watched and said she would show it to Qingniang tomorrow, starting with what she had actually seen, in case she got carried away and added all sorts of things that had never been there. Gu Qing nodded and left the lid ajar to let the damp slowly escape.