The Stitches That Make Someone Stay

At first only one layer of A-Heng's new costume was made. A-Zhao joined the leftover cloth into long strips and had Lu Heniang put it on and walk through the moves. There were no beads on the hem, and it looked very plain. The woman looked in the mirror and the first thing she said was that just because they couldn't perform by the back river was no reason to turn her into a neighbor come to borrow a bench. A-Zhao flushed and hastened to say this was the lining. She hadn't made the outside yet. She hadn't meant for her to go out like this.

Even after hearing her out, Lu Heniang wouldn’t just raise her arm as A-Zhao asked. She wanted to come around from the side of the stage, step onto the plank that served as the boat, and turn to the most awkward angle before shifting the pole. A-Zhao followed her with her eyes, making more marks on the paper than she did when measuring cloth. At last she put it down and held a length of thread loosely across the place where the heavy ornaments would go. As the woman turned, her elbow caught the thread and lifted it, revealing the snag where A-Zhao had expected none.

This time Azhao held off cutting. She asked for another run so she could watch from the other side. By the third pass Lu Heniang was getting irritated. All Azhao had done today was watch, she said, and she'd still have to wear the thing tomorrow. Azhao admitted she might not finish today. She wanted to see this bit clearly first, without waiting until Lu Heniang was through the curtain to tell her to take it off more slowly. Lu Heniang gave her a look and didn't tease her again about the blue-green robe from last time. She agreed to just two more passes. She still had her singing to practice.

Xiaoman watched from beside her and told her to put the heavy ornaments on the outer layer for now, tying them on separately instead of sewing them down. A-Zhao tried it and found that if the ties were all hidden deep inside, they’d still have to feel around for them when taking the costume off. She moved them to where they could be reached easily from the cuff. A little extra knot showed in the mirror. Lu Heniang thought it looked untidy, though she had no desire to go back to a costume she could hardly get out of. The three of them shifted it back and forth until they found a spot for the knot in a fold they already had to gather.

There was nothing miraculous about the new method. Every part of it could be found in things they already used. The hard part was putting it in the right place on this garment, for this person, at this step. A rule about how every costume ought to be made wouldn't do. A-Zhao had tried it with her own hands, but she still had to test it again after Lu Heniang had worked up a sweat. What moved easily in dry cloth might stick when it was wet. When Gao Man came to hurry her along, she made no further promise to deliver it today and explained exactly what still had to be tested.

Gao Man was displeased. The date for the small show was set too, she said. Losing the big stage didn’t give them all the time in the world. A-Zhao almost promised away the rest of her nights again, but Xiaoman pressed a hand to the base of a finger, lost her grip on the needle, and let it roll onto the cloth. A-Zhao caught the momentary pallor on her face and asked if it hurt again. Xiaoman said it was nothing serious. She could use another finger. She said it so readily that she’d plainly done it many times.

A-Zhao took the other half and said she'd do it that night. At first she really had wanted Xiaoman to rest a little. But with all the cloth in her arms, she felt a thrill at the thought of finally being in charge of a whole costume herself. If she got this one right, everyone would know she could do more than unpick seams, and Lu Heniang wouldn't always have to turn back to ask Xiaoman. The thought refused to go away just because she'd had a setback last time. She even worked faster, as though she could outrun it and never have to admit it was there.

On the second night, her own fingers began to ache, and every so often her thumb went numb against the thimble. Everyone outside was asleep. She still had two sections to finish, and the lining they needed to try in the morning had yet to be washed and dried. Only then did she realize that taking over meant more than having her name on a whole costume. It meant taking on all the little tasks the person before her had quietly done day after day. If she simply put herself in Xiaoman’s place, she might finish the costume, but someone would still be wearing herself out the same way.

She did not wake Xiaoman to seek a word about how hard she was working. First she separated what was essential tomorrow from what could wait. In the morning, she found Ye Zhen at the market and asked whether she could finish just two lining pieces and this unpicking and washing within three days, without being pressed at night. Ye Zhen examined them and quoted thirty-six copper coins. She would still work to her own schedule, point out damaged edges beforehand, and would not share responsibility for all the extra work the troupe might add at the last minute.

The thirty-six cash would come out of A-Zhao’s pay for the costume, and once she did the sums, she was a little reluctant to part with it. Ye Zhen’s price was fair. A-Zhao had simply assumed that the more she did, the more of the pay she would get to keep. Now she had to give someone else a share first so she could get enough sleep, see all she needed to see, and do all the work that was hers. She nodded and arranged when to collect it, without asking for a discount because they were all in the same troupe.

Xiaoman happened to see Ye Zhen take the basket. She asked if the half she’d done hadn’t worked out. A-Zhao said no, nobody could do three things at once with one hand. It sounded like she was making things easier for someone else, but once she’d said it she knew there was something she needed herself, so she added that this time she meant to go through the whole sequence with the person wearing the costume. She couldn’t spend all her time buried in work by the water buckets again. Xiaoman watched her for a moment, then let the materials go and went to lay the songbook open.

By mid-June the heat had made its way indoors. Cloth dried fast, and people sweated more. Lu Heniang put on the new costume and ran through a whole act from the beginning. As she came through the curtain, she told Azhao to handle the change as she would in performance. She couldn't wait until Lu Heniang had come to a stop and undone the ties herself. Azhao's hands were still a little slow. She tucked one end of a tie in the wrong place and they had to stop again. They took the pause in stride, put the tie back where it belonged, and ran through it once more.

With the heavy trim removed, the inner costume still let its wearer turn. Gu Ming watched from the side and asked if the next costume might also save Scholar Liu half a beat of struggling. Azhao said to let her deliver this set first, and to tell her exactly how he wanted to change before she started. Gu Ming raised a hand in assent. He made a point of laying the wooden sword in front of her so she could see he'd removed the two strands of the tassel most likely to snag. She couldn't help touching the spot, still a little pleased that he'd remembered, though she left the new bolts of cloth where they were.

The outer layer of the new costume still shone. A little string of beads Lu Heniang had picked out stayed on the front, off to one side, where it would swing when she turned. They'd kept some ornament for its own sake without making one pair of shoulders carry every pretty thing. The woman studied herself in the mirror for a while and said she liked the beads, but the right sleeve was still a little long. Azhao folded it up then and there and had her take up the pole again. Only when the sleeve cleared it as she lowered her hand did Azhao note how much to take up.

Gao Man checked the scraps left from the troupe's cloth and asked how much of the sample A-Zhao had bought at the beginning was still usable. A-Zhao had written it all off as the cost of practice and was taken aback when she heard it would go into the costume's materials account. Gao Man said they'd count what was actually used, without charging the troupe for the whole lot. There was no sense in letting her anger boil down to everyone takes advantage of me if, the moment something reached someone else's hands, all she could say was never mind. A-Zhao flushed, but handed her the little piece.

They had agreed beforehand on two hundred cash for the outfit, a hundred up front and the other hundred once payment came in from the next round of small performances. The date went on the back of the slip used to track materials issued and returned, so that a few days later they would remember more than who had said it looked good. A-Zhao asked for the exact date. When she first came, she would have simply agreed for fear of making things awkward. This time she didn’t quietly pocket the thirty-six cash as a sacrifice no one knew about, either. She set Ye Zhen’s share aside and kept the rest. For the first time, she could talk about working together in terms of what the job actually needed, instead of making it sound as though she’d kindly put in an extra night for someone.

When Gao Shoucheng saw that they could manage the costume change, he wanted to schedule another performance. They had the costume now, he said, so if they hadn’t filled the seats, they could ask people to come one more time. Lu Heniang was the first to shake her head. After two nights her voice was already tight. A-Zhao said the lining might not be dry by tomorrow night and the spare still needed alterations. If they added a show at short notice, they would have to use the old costume. The troupe leader grew cross and asked how there could already be a problem when they had just finished it. She laid a dry piece and a damp one beside his hand and let him feel them for himself, without trying to settle it with a long argument.

Even after feeling the cloth, he was reluctant to give in, but he left the wet costume off the performers. In the end they left the extra show off the schedule for now, until the current run was actually over. A-Zhao knew he’d ask again if they sold even fewer tickets, and that she couldn’t just say no every time. She made a note of one more spare lining and would work out the labor if it was ever needed, without sewing every night to come into today’s work.

On the day of the small performance, A-Zhao stood by the changing-room door, leaving the brightest spot for others. The audience was smaller than they had expected for the big show. The sound of money being collected outside soon stopped, and she heard someone say the costume was still the old color and wonder whether they could afford a replacement. Her heart sank. She almost lifted the curtain to explain where she had done the new work. Just then Lu Heniang came in. A-Zhao cupped her hand and the end of the new tie dropped into her palm. The actor's breath and the drumbeat were both waiting.

She had no time to explain. They took off the heavy ornaments and put in the dry lining. When Lu Heniang went back on, she gave A-Zhao a single nod, and her right shoulder no longer hesitated first. A-Zhao finally understood that for now it was enough that the people using it knew it worked. She didn’t have to chase after someone in the audience to argue over a remark. When Gu Ming came through the curtain in the later act, they kept a path clear according to the new instructions. Even A-Sheng knew he couldn’t sit there in the way with his bamboo slat.

After the performance, Lu Heniang returned the costume, pointing out two places to work on tomorrow and saying she had been able to move without worry in today's costume. She did not praise A-Zhao for being a natural or tell her she would be in charge of all the costume trunks from now on. She only asked how to hang the ties so they would not tangle. A-Zhao took out the short labels she had made, and she and Gao Man sorted the pieces they had removed. Whoever took over would be able to pick up where they left off without having to wait for A-Zhao to stand by every time.

When Ye Zhen came for her pay, A-Zhao counted out the full thirty-six. Ye Zhen checked it and put it away, saying that if they did the washing the same way next time, this inner seam could be closed later and save her from unpicking it twice. A-Zhao made a note, taking the suggestion without feeling any of her work had been taken away. After Ye Zhen left, she put the rest of the money back in her own little pouch. Having her name on the whole costume no longer made her feel that she had to keep every bit of what it earned to count the job a success.

That night there was no more noise under the bed, but A-Zhao was too excited to fall asleep for a long while. Xiaoman was fast asleep, her hand open on top of the covers. Tonight she hadn’t had to hunt for a needle just as the lamp was going out. A-Zhao pushed the needle case that had rolled to the edge of the table back to a dry spot and lay down herself. In the courtyard she could still hear Gu Ming counting out the steps of his sword dance under his breath. Those steps might not always belong to the same stage. She turned over and stayed in bed, leaving unmade the new costume nobody had asked her for.