A Flower That Wasn't a Flower

Luo Yi wanted blue plum blossoms. As she said it, Gu Qing was hiding the loose thread ends on a red plum blossom. Her fingers tightened, curling a petal that should have lain flat into a narrow corner. Xiaoman sat opposite without looking up, yet Gu Qing felt certain she had heard that moment of hesitation.

Luo Yi had come by way of the Yao shop. Yao Liao wasn't willing to change a whole set of patterns for eighteen sprays, so she'd sent Luo Yi to see if the flower maker would try. They could talk it over before deciding, she'd said, instead of waiting for the finished goods to say she'd had something different in mind. Luo Yi brought no flower guide, only a piece of blue cloth with uneven shades like ripples on water. She wanted twelve sprays to display on a table and six that could be removed and pinned in the hair, ready to send at year's end to the new scented powder shop in Shixian.

“What plum blossom ever had a color like that?” Gu Qing said.

Luo Yi smoothed the cloth flat. “That’s why I came to a silk flower maker. If I wanted something that grew on a tree, I could just wait for the branches to bloom and buy it then.”

Gu Qing had no answer to that, but she still wanted to make clear that she wasn't someone who splashed just any dye onto cloth. She found the white plum blossom and set it on the fabric to show Luo Yi how the pale color played against the blue. Luo Yi looked carefully and took no issue with it. It looked good this way too, she said, but the wooden sign outside her shop had already been made in the shape of a ripple. She wanted people at a distance to see that same color on the counter, before they came close enough to guess whether the flowers were real.

Gu Qing finally understood that Luo Yi wasn't asking for a plum blossom that looked more like a real one. Understanding it did little to make her like it any faster. The deep blue beneath the white petals seemed to swallow the light she'd been so careful to leave in them the night before. She took back the flower and asked whether, if they used the cloth as a guide, the center would be blue too. Luo Yi laughed and said, “Let me see it. If I like it, we'll use it. Give me a chance to like things before you spare me any of them.”

Xiaoman looked up then and said the dyehouse’s deep blue might go almost black while wet. If they were using thin silk, they could try dyeing just the edge first. Gu Qing was about to say she had thought of that too, but when Luo Yi asked Xiaoman if she knew how to dye, she swallowed the words. Xiaoman said she had helped tend a vat. She could promise little when it came to such subtle colors, but she could try on two scraps of silk, and they would know within a day whether it worked.

Luo Yi didn't ask about her wages right away. First she looked at the wooden pin at the back of Xiaoman's hair. Tucked beside it was a very old curled petal, the one Gu Qing had thought an empty bowl had crushed a few days before. Xiaoman had straightened it out and put it on at some point without her noticing. Luo Yi asked if the blue flowers could be made like that too, with one side turned out a little instead of everything crowded toward the middle. Gu Qing recognized it at once. A customer had just picked out the very design she had said Yao's shop wouldn't want.

She meant to say that wasn't a plum blossom, but what came out was that it would take a couple more trials, and they might not all turn out the same. Luo Yi said that was just right. If all twelve stems for the display table looked identical, they would seem to have been punched out of a single sheet of paper. She smiled, left the cloth on the table, and arranged to come back in three days to see the sample. If it didn't work out, they would say so up front and leave it there. If it did, the eighteen stems would be fourteen wen each, to be delivered to Shixian by the end of the month, with a third paid in advance so Gu Qing wouldn't have to buy the materials empty-handed.

Eighty-four cash landed on the table. Gu Qing first asked what would happen to the money if the sample was unsuitable. Luo Yi said that if materials were spoiled in the trials, they could work out how much had been used. The flower maker needn't bear the whole cost. Gu Qing couldn't help glancing at Xiaoman, who had already lowered her head and gone back to sorting the tray of ivory petals, letting the moment pass without asking about the two cash for her earlier work. When Gu Qing took the money, it gave her less pleasure than it had at first sight, as though the blue cloth on the table had brought to light something she herself had left unclear.

After Luo Yi left, her grandmother lifted the curtain a little to give the blue cloth more light. Instead of pointing out that no plum blossom in the world looked like that, she asked Gu Qing to bring over the flower centers and hold them against the fabric. The pale yellow looked dingy and the red drew too much attention. Her grandmother picked a bit of pale gray-white and slipped it into the blue. She'd made flowers for an opera troupe when she was young, she said. People onstage had to be able to make out faces, and the colors didn't have to match what grew in the courtyard. Gu Qing asked what year she'd made those flowers. Her grandmother just said it was a long time ago and declined to turn the date into a long conversation.

The dyeing had to be done in the kitchen. Gu Qing washed the pot for the materials twice, afraid residual grease would ruin the new silk. Xiao Man washed her hands even longer, though old blue dye remained beneath her nails. Eventually she stopped looking at it and simply wiped clean the fingertips that would touch the silk. The two stood close beside the small stove. As soon as steam rose from the pot, a patch of the paper window misted over. Shen Su pushed half the window open for them. With old cloth covering her knees, she sat out of their way, sorting gray-white flower centers.

The first batch came out too dark. Gu Qing held up a wet piece and thought it looked nothing like the cloth they had been given. Xiaoman said to wait until it dried, but Gu Qing insisted on seeing how the edge looked now. She rubbed it between her fingers and creased the wet silk. They looked at each other, both knowing whose fault this piece was. Gu Qing set it apart from the dish of scraps on Xiaoman’s side. When she looked at it again that night, the dark color had indeed lightened a shade, but the mark from her fingers was still there, like a bite mark left by impatience.

That wrinkled piece of silk sent Gu Qing back to the fabric shop. She walked in and asked for the finest, tightest weave they had, but after hearing what it was for, Sister Ji first took out a bolt with a less silky finish. Gu Qing found it rough to the touch and asked whether the customer would complain if the blue flowers came out coarse. Sister Ji said it depended on where you put it. If you went to draw water with a fine thread, it could be the prettiest thread in the world, and you still couldn't blame the water for refusing to come with it.

Xiaoman had come along to carry the freshly dyed cloth while it was still wet. When she saw the bolt of silk, she ran her fingers over it for a little longer. She draped it across the back of her hand and showed Gu Qing how it held its shape when she flexed her knuckles, then brought out a thinner silk and pinched it into a blossom for comparison. The thin silk shone between her fingers and went limp as soon as she let go. The first was less translucent, but would hold an outward curl at the edge much longer. Gu Qing was suddenly annoyed with herself for asking for the dearest fabric the moment she walked in, as though price alone could make her stand tall before a customer.

She didn't take her annoyance out on Xiaoman. She cut a swatch of each fabric and asked first who might buy the scraps left over. Sister Ji said the larger pieces could still be made into something else, but she couldn't count on selling anything as small as her palm. She thought for a moment, bought the stiffer silk, and handed back the thinnest piece. On the way out, Xiaoman went ahead. The basket of wet cloth was heavy, but her steps were even. Gu Qing reached for one end, and Xiaoman paused in surprise before letting her take it.

The two of them carried the same basket across the bridge, so neither could pick out the dry spots for herself anymore. Gu Qing stepped in shallow water, and Xiaoman’s sleeve brushed the railing. Neither could very well blame the other. They only put the basket down and rested their hands when they reached the mouth of the lane. Gu Qing laughed first, saying it was harder than carrying a tray of flowers. Xiaoman looked down at the basketful of wet blue cloth and said it would be lighter once it dried. Gu Qing heard her and was in no hurry to reach out and feel cloth that hadn’t finished drying a second time.

The next day they dyed just three pieces. Gu Qing handled the color at the edges, Xiaoman shaped the curves of the petals, and Grandmother sorted thread beside them. The table was narrower than before and their hands often bumped. At first Gu Qing always wanted Xiaoman to stop first. Then she turned the thread box around, leaving a gap where both could reach in at the same time. None of the three petals quite resembled the cloth it had come from, but each had a bright edge of its own. Spread out in the palm, they looked much prettier than they had when wet.

When it came time to curl the flowers, Gu Qing still had her doubts about the petal that turned outward. She made the first blossom in the usual style, and Xiaoman made a second after the one she wore at the back of her hair. On the table, one looked neatly drawn together. The other looked as though it had forgotten to close a little window. Shen Su studied them for a long time. When she was young, she said, she too used to judge how pretty a flower looked head-on, but a person wearing one was as likely to turn aside. Gu Qing held both up by her ear and turned her head to look in the basin of water.

The woman in the basin had rather untidy hair and a mended cuff, yet the blue flower looked quite at home on her. She moved the flower with the outward turn a little farther back, bringing her eyes into view, and suddenly she seemed like another self she had never thought of. When she said nothing, Xiaoman asked if it still looked wrong. Gu Qing shook her head and said they would choose when the customer came. In fact, she already leaned a little one way and just didn't want anyone to see her change her mind so soon.

On the twenty-first, Luo Yi came to see the samples, carrying a little jar of fragrance with no sweetness to it. She left the flowers unscented and simply opened the jar by the window for Shen Su to smell. She asked if the room was dry and whether strong smells made her dizzy when she worked on flowers. Gu Qing answered for her grandmother first and said they didn't. Her grandmother said they did if she smelled them for too long, and that if she wanted a sniff she would come closer for a moment. Luo Yi put the lid back on at once, without looking put out that the old woman's response fell short of praise.

She chose one with petals turned outward and asked if they could use it as a model, with no need to turn all twelve sprays the same way. Gu Qing said Xiaoman had tried that part first, and she herself had adjusted the color. Saying the name felt like a needle passing through the little place inside her that still refused to yield. There was a faint sting and a greater sense of release. Luo Yi turned and thanked Xiaoman for her work. Xiaoman smiled more openly than she had in all her days working at the Gu house, then quickly checked herself and touched the old wooden pin at the back of her hair.

The price stayed the same after that word of thanks. The eighteen stems, the six detachable ones, and the delivery date stood as agreed. Luo Yi added only that a petal or two out of line might suit her better than having them all forced into the same shape. Gu Qing wrote the main points on paper, drawing simple circles for the characters she couldn't write. Luo Yi left those alone and drew one more little line at the detachable part, telling her that in her hurry to finish a whole stem, she mustn't sew down the piece meant to come off and be worn.

After the customer left, Gu Qing took apart the first, overly even blue flower again and saved what she could use. She made no claim that both flowers were her own improvements. She put Xiaoman's old trial petal away in a flat box first and asked whether she might borrow it again when matching colors. Xiaoman said she could, as long as she didn't put it under a bowl. Gu Qing felt her face grow hot. She slipped a piece of dry paper underneath, as if making room for a new flower she had just been given, or leaving herself a reminder she couldn't casually alter.

That night she worked until her grandmother called her to eat, but put down her needle more readily than before. Three bowls were set out. At first Xiaoman said she should go because there was food at home, but Shen Su told her to have a few bites first. One more bowl of what was left cost very little. Xiaoman sat and carefully laid her hairpin at the corner of the table so it wouldn't catch a flower as she ate. Gu Qing saw the old curled petal and, without asking whose material it had come from, reached out and moved the soup bowl farther in, clearing a little dry space for that piece of silk half a finger long.