Half a Day's Wages

The first time Dong Xiaoman came to the Gu house, she felt the silk drying line before she looked at the flowers on the table. The line was stretched between two old nails, and when she pressed it with a finger, it sagged half an inch in the middle. Gu Qing thought she was going to remark on how makeshift the place was and was about to explain that she had only just moved things for the wall repairs. Xiaoman asked whether they hung the wet fabric there too. When Gu Qing said yes, Xiaoman took off her outer garment and laid it over a lower pole, leaving the space clear for the silk.

Sister Ji had sent her. The dye works had less work in winter, but the New Year goods still had to be finished in a hurry. Some people could go home and rest. Others went a day without a meal if they took a day off. When Gu Qing went to buy thread, she mentioned that Yao's shop wanted to try a few more kinds of camellia and she couldn't get them done in time on her own. From across half a bolt of silk, Sister Ji asked whether she wanted someone who could do the work or someone who would call her master. Gu Qing thought that a strange way to ask and answered that of course she wanted the work done well. Only then did Sister Ji call to the young woman by the door, who was helping someone tie up a parcel.

Xiaoman was three years younger than Gu Qing, but she didn't start by smiling when she spoke. When she heard the work was making flowers, she asked first who would supply the dyed material and whether she could work full days or half days. Gu Qing answered each question and finally said they could start with a half day. If Xiaoman came early, she could leave before the meal. As for pay, Gu Qing had meant to offer six copper coins for half a day. Then she looked at the new thread she'd just bought and worried Xiaoman might be slow, so she offered two coins for each set of wrapped stems and sorted petals. Three sets would still come to six.

Xiaoman nodded once. She said nothing about which arrangement she preferred and asked only what counted as one batch. Gu Qing showed her with a finished stem. The stem below the flower head had to be wrapped neatly, and the petals sorted into the right number for each blossom. Xiaoman could leave the most delicate work of drawing in the center to Gu Qing. Xiaoman turned the stem over to see which way the thread ran, then set it in the middle of the table. Both thought they had made things clear enough, so neither asked what would happen if a batch came out wrong or how to count the time spent stopping to alter a pattern.

Shen Su came out of the room and, hearing that her surname was Dong, asked whether she worked at the South Bridge dyehouse. Xiaoman said she did and greeted her as Granny Shen. Her grandmother waved a hand and pointed to a little stool beside the table for her to sit on, keeping her own place. It was only when Gu Qing went for the materials that she noticed how little legroom there was for three people around the table since it had been moved indoors. She brought over an old door panel to extend the other end, but Xiaoman said she only needed a hand's breadth beside her.

The first set went quickly. Xiaoman's hands were less delicate in their work than Gu Qing's, but steady. She could wind the thread without jerking the bamboo stem out of line in her haste. She laid the sorted white petals out from widest to narrowest, keeping the two smallest out from under the larger ones, with the same care she took at the dyehouse to notice which edge would drink in more color when the silk was hung to dry. Gu Qing watched, quite pleased, though she was reluctant to say too much in praise straightaway, for fear Xiaoman wouldn't listen when she wanted something changed later.

From the second lot she picked out two petals and said the edges were a little thin. Xiaoman held them up to the light and asked whether the material itself was thin or whether she ought to trim them. Gu Qing said both mattered. If a customer got hold of a frayed edge, the flower maker would still be the one to blame. Xiaoman let that pass. She replaced the two petals and put the originals in the scrap dish, keeping them out of the neatly sorted tray. When Gu Qing saw her do that, she couldn't help asking whether they could save them for small flowers. Xiaoman said they could, as long as Gu Qing put them somewhere else so she wouldn't pick them up next time and count them as good petals again.

By the third lot, Shen Su had begun threading a fine needle for Gu Qing. She tried only in the brightest spot, moving the needle nearer and then farther away, and it took some time for the thread to go through. Gu Qing was about to tell her to stop when Xiaoman set the needle packet lower and said that with a slightly larger eye, the end of a coarse thread wouldn't fray so easily. Her grandmother looked up and said a wider needle would leave holes in fine silk. Xiaoman nodded, put the needle back just as it had been, and left it there without trying to show she knew her craft too.

Gu Qing sensed a little awkwardness between the two of them and hurriedly picked up the new camellia to ask Xiaoman what she thought. The design came from Yao’s shop. The outer petals had to be full, and the center couldn’t be as sparse as a plum blossom’s. Xiaoman looked at it, then suddenly curled a petal outward and held it sideways in her palm, as if it had turned over into the wind before it had quite found its shape. At first glance Gu Qing thought it beautiful. At second glance she thought it didn’t look like the shop’s sample. She told Xiaoman to put it down and follow the original for now.

Xiaoman smiled, if it was a smile, and casually tucked the curled petal beside the old wooden hairpin at the back of her head. Her hair was not tightly dressed, and the petal looked very light against its dark edge, as though it might fall at any moment, yet it never did. Gu Qing wanted to tell her to take it down. Small as the piece was, she could not simply wear the material away. The words were on her lips when her grandmother spoke first, saying it did not hide her face that way. Gu Qing had to hold her words back. She drew out another petal for Xiaoman, saying she did not mean to deduct the cost of materials; she was only afraid the official count would come up short.

Xiaoman took the flower down and put it back by the edge of the table. She'd count this petal as a spoiled trial of her own, she said, and leave it out of the delivery. She spoke matter-of-factly, yet for some reason Gu Qing felt uneasy, as if she'd learned to count the movements of another person's hands with her eyes before she'd become someone who could put food on that person's table. She took out six cash and waited until Xiaoman had laid the three portions out neatly, then put the coins at the outer edge. All six were there.

Xiaoman didn't take the money at once. She asked if she should come the next day. Gu Qing said yes, at the same time, and if she had to go out, she'd ask her grandmother to keep an eye on things. Xiaoman glanced at Shen Su before putting the coins in the little pouch at her belt. She might be a little late tomorrow, she said. There was a vat at the dyehouse that needed moving first to finish a batch. Gu Qing agreed and was already reckoning how much work that little delay would cost, but she didn't ask whether moving the vat counted as one piece of work or half a day.

After Xiaoman left, Grandmother picked up the curled petal she had set down and showed Gu Qing the back. She had worked without their old pattern. The edge slanted a little, so when it curled out it didn't look like part of a deliberately even ring. Gu Qing said it was quite nice, but the Yao shop wanted something else. Shen Su said she hadn't asked her to change the customer's design and put the petal back. Gu Qing suddenly felt there were two different ways for something to be quite nice on the very same table. For now she had little time to see to the second.

She couldn't wait the five days they had agreed on and went to the East Market the next afternoon to see about the eight stems. Yao Liao said five had sold and three were still there. At six wen per stem, she could settle thirty wen today. Gu Qing took the money. It was a neater sum than she had ever scraped together selling one stem at a time by the roadside, but she didn't feel nearly as carefree as she'd imagined. She had already bought new material and paid Xiaoman's wages, and she still had to take the three unsold stems back to exchange for other designs. Holding a string of coins didn't mean she was free to spend it all on something else.

Seeing her stare at the sum, Yao Liao asked whether she meant to stop. Gu Qing shook her head and hurried to say she had no quarrel with the price. It was her first time having help, and she was working out how to keep up. Yao Liao said she made the same calculations every day. One of her three women would soon have to go home to look after someone who was ill, and she still needed flowers for the New Year. If Gu Qing could really supply more, she would take both camellias and plum blossoms, but they had to agree on the designs each time before she made them. She couldn't make them first and then complain that customers wouldn't take to them.

Gu Qing put the three unsold sprays back in place. One was short and had been pressed a little crooked from leaning so long against the counter. When she reached to straighten it, the woman behind the counter handed her a small length of thread and told her not to force it. Gu Qing smiled and thanked her. The woman smiled too and asked if the new girl working for her was a Dong. It turned out Xiaoman had worked with her at the dyehouse. Hearing that Xiaoman had days elsewhere and people who knew her there took Gu Qing by surprise, though she couldn't quite say why. It was as if the person she had hired for half a day should naturally have belonged to her table all day.

On the fifteenth, Xiaoman was indeed a quarter of an hour late. She came in with a dark blue patch on her sleeve, still damp from washing. Gu Qing’s first question was whether any of it had got onto the white silk here. Xiaoman said she hadn't touched it and went to wash her hands of her own accord. When she came back, Gu Qing pushed a batch of bamboo stems from two days before across the table and said two were wrapped too loosely and had to be redone. Xiaoman felt them without arguing, unwound the old thread into a small dish, and wrapped them again.

She turned in only two batches that half day. Gu Qing counted out four cash. Xiaoman reached for them, hesitated, and asked whether undoing the two stems counted as work. Gu Qing said they had been done wrong in the first place. Yao’s shop treated her work the same way. Anything returned had to be done again. Xiaoman lifted her head and looked at her as though she had something quite long to say, but in the end said only that she understood. She put away the four cash and swept the table clean before she went, leaving quietly and keeping her hurt to herself in front of Grandmother.

Shen Su had said nothing all along. Only when Gu Qing began making flower centers did she ask whether the two stems might have come out that way because Gu Qing hadn't made the winding direction clear two days earlier. Gu Qing said she had shown her a sample. Her grandmother asked whether there wasn't an extra turn of thread hidden at the base of that stem, and whether Gu Qing had taken it apart when she showed it to Xiaoman. Gu Qing’s hands stopped. She suddenly remembered that the first time she had only turned the flower over and had indeed left the knot below the center intact. She wanted to go after Xiaoman and make up the two cash, but when she saw the mouth of the lane getting crowded, she told herself tomorrow would do just as well.

The next day brought fresh material and new customers asking about flowers. She put the two copper coins with the change for buying needles and, while moving the material, forgot which money was which. Xiaoman still came on time and sometimes turned the wooden pin at the back of their hair the other way, but never again casually put on a new petal. The trial flower with its petals curling outward lay under an empty bowl at the edge of the table. By the time Gu Qing remembered it, that first touch of lightness, like wind, was gone.

At dusk on the seventeenth, Gu Qing found that Grandmother had mended six flower centers while she was out. The stitches had been made slowly, and on one of them a row was wrong. The moment Gu Qing saw it, she wanted to pull it out. Shen Su sat by the brazier with the backs of her hands red and said nothing about how much she had done. In the end Gu Qing left the scissors alone. She set that flower aside and first asked whether Grandmother had eaten. Grandmother said she'd had half a bowl of porridge, so Gu Qing went to the stove to warm the other half. She couldn't bring herself to look at the six flower centers or admit when she had begun finding fault with the help she got while still hoping someone would always be there to finish what was left on her table.