Packing After the Snow

A light snow fell on the twenty-third. By early afternoon it had melted entirely at the edges of the street, though dampness lingered beneath the eaves. Gu Qing lined up the eight newly finished blue plum-blossom sprigs on the table. Beside them were petal blanks, their colors already matched, for another ten sprigs. It was like looking at a row of things ready to walk out the door by themselves. The flower heads varied in shade, and each outward-turning petal had its own little curve, just as in the sample Luo Yi had chosen. Afraid they would be damaged again in delivery, she had specially bought thick paper boxes and wrapped the outside in old oilcloth. She felt she could not have been more thorough.

Xiaoman said they should pack two stems and leave them overnight as a test. Gu Qing tensed at the word. They had tested these flowers so many times already, from the color to the shape. If they had to wait a night over every little thing, the end of the month would be forever ahead of them. But she thought of the piece of silk she had spoiled by rubbing it while it was still wet and held off on sealing the others up with them. They put the two stems in one box, stuffed paper along all four sides, and pressed the lid down tight. The box spent the night beneath the window.

They opened it the next day. The flowers had held together, but the outermost petal had stuck to the paper. Gu Qing worked it loose slowly with a needle, and a little color came off the edge with the paper. At first she blamed the rough paper. Only when she took it into the light did she notice the damp trapped inside the box. Even the thread wrapped around the stems had softened. They were worse off than if they had stayed on the table. Xiaoman reached out and felt the bottom of the box. After a moment she said that if they sent them all sealed like this, by the time they got there it might be impossible to tell what had got damp first.

Gu Qing felt as though she had ruined good things by putting them away with her own hands. Seeing her unable to put the flowers down, her grandmother first told her to spread out those that could be saved, rather than clutching them tighter the more she grieved. Those two stems were not entirely lost, but the petals needed reshaping, and the one that had lost its color had to be replaced. She held the ruined petal in her palm for a long time before releasing it into the materials dish. She no longer said that customers would not notice from a distance.

She went to Yao's shop to ask about boxes. Yao Liao looked at the oilcloth on the outside and said she used cases for short trips and different carriers for goods going farther. An unsoaked case was no guarantee the contents would stay dry. She could lend Gu Qing an old compartmented box to look at, but the shop was busy at the end of the year and no one could pack her eighteen flowers one by one. Gu Qing took the box and thanked her quickly. On the way home she was reluctant to cross the bridge. She was afraid she'd pass the Zhou family's umbrella workshop and someone would ask why she looked as if her goods had been crushed before she'd said a word.

In the end she went over anyway. Zhou Jiping was crouched inside the doorway shaving strips of bamboo. A woman beside him was sorting through a stack of oilcloth. Seeing Gu Qing with her box, she asked first if she’d come to buy an umbrella or have one mended. Gu Qing said she wanted to ask how to pack something. Zhou Jiping stood up, but the woman put an umbrella handle that hadn’t been fully tied off into his hand and told him to finish counting this batch first. The carter would be there between seven and nine to collect it, and he couldn’t have the man show up only to watch him walk out again.

Only then did Gu Qing learn that the woman was Lu Ying, Zhou Jiping’s sister-in-law, and that she arranged the shop’s deliveries. She spoke without harshness and gave Gu Qing no extra scrutiny for being a young woman. She only asked whether the work was urgent and whether Gu Qing could come in the afternoon if all she needed was for someone to take a look. Holding the box, Gu Qing said she could. She felt a little hurt as she turned away, but by the time she crossed the bridge, she thought Lu Ying’s question made as much sense as Xu Tan inspecting the flowers. Being in a hurry herself was no reason to stop seeing that.

When she came back in the afternoon, there were several fresh red pressure marks across Zhou Jiping’s palm. He set the paper box under the rack where he dried his umbrellas, lifted the oilcloth, and looked at the paper packed tight inside. He neither laughed at Gu Qing nor told her straightaway what to do. He simply folded a piece of umbrella covering that hadn’t dried through, then spread it out again after a while and had her see which dried first, the place that had been pressed together or the part left open.

Gu Qing said she was afraid the flowers would get wet on the road. Surely she had to wrap them? Zhou Jiping said wrapping kept water from getting in. She still had to think about the moisture already inside. He found a few thin bamboo strips and folded the paper double, making little compartments that would support the stems without touching the blossoms. He said he was only trying what he knew from making umbrellas. The petals were thinner than oiled cloth, and she'd still have to leave them out overnight when she got home. This time Gu Qing found it easier than she had that morning to agree to wait a night.

Several of the slender bamboo strips beside him had been intended for small umbrellas; taking them out left him one frame short. Lu Ying saw from inside and told him to record the materials used clearly, so he would not fail to account for them at month's end and blame her for counting the stock short. Zhou Jiping looked up, smiling, and said to charge them to the Gu household. She said he could record any name he liked, as long as he did not merely write them off as something done in passing. Gu Qing smiled too and asked of her own accord how much the labor and materials would cost. After considering, Lu Ying said eight wen for two trial frames and cutting the materials. If Gu Qing could make them herself afterward, there would be no further charge.

Eight copper coins wasn't much, but Gu Qing still felt around in her purse for a while. Zhou Jiping didn't try to steer her either way. If he used the bamboo offcuts he already had, he said, it would take less work, but the corners would be uneven and might not sit flush when tied. She paid the full eight in the end, waited for him to finish, and came away with two bare bamboo frames that looked nothing like umbrella canopies. There was no extra umbrella or promise that everything would turn out fine. She stacked the two trial frames and felt how much lighter they were in her hands than the box she'd stuffed full of paper that morning.

Before leaving, she noticed a paper bird hanging on the umbrella workshop's door. Its wings were unequal, and whenever wind slipped in, it tilted to the same side. She thought a customer had left it behind, but Zhou Jiping said he had folded it himself to test the wind at the doorway. Gu Qing cradled it in her palm. The bird still leaned crookedly, its stiff paper tail pricking her skin. At last she could not help laughing. He made things so evenly, she said; why did his own bird look as though it had been drinking?

Zhou Jiping reached for it. She raised her hand a little and asked whether she could fix one side. The words came out casually, and only afterward did it strike her that teasing him with something of his was unkind. She hurried to give it back. He left it in her hand and pointed to one wing. He had folded it after an umbrella canopy he had botched, he said. The sides were uneven to begin with, and it still remembered which way the wind came from. It sounded to her as though he'd just made that up to save face for his crooked bird. They laughed for a long while with the paper bird between them.

Lu Ying called from behind the counter for him to stop blocking the door. If a customer did come in, he and the bird would both be knocked out of it. He hung the paper bird up again. Gu Qing took a short piece of soft thread for binding flowers from the bottom of her basket and replaced the string it hung from, which was close to breaking. The bird still leaned to one side. Changing the string had taught it nothing about sitting straight. She dusted her hands and went out. Behind her, Zhou Jiping said that when she delivered those blue flowers, she should save a crooked one for him. Without turning around, she said even the crooked ones were made of good material. She wasn't keeping the leftovers just for him.

She was still laughing as she crossed the bridge, though the cold wind stung her cheeks a little. She had no wish to take that laugh home and explain it in terms of how much anyone had done for her. She lowered her head and kept the trial frames safe in her arms. They were so slender that she had to watch for other people's sleeves as she went around corners, but by then the trip felt like more than an errand over a box of ruined flowers.

Her grandmother turned the trial frame over, first remarking that its maker had practiced hands, then looking at the leftover bamboo strips Gu Qing had brought back and asking whether they were gifts or purchases. Only when Gu Qing said everything had been paid for did she nod and test the newly folded paper divider with a fingernail. Xiaoman watched from beside them, folding her third box herself, slightly narrower than the first two, just right for holding the six detachable flowers separately. They tried each different method, without assuming that something made by a hired craftsman must be better than what they folded themselves.

On the morning of the twenty-fifth, the flower heads in the box still came apart one by one. Gu Qing breathed a sigh of relief, then carried the box around the courtyard, shaking it gently to imitate the jolts of a cart. Xiaoman couldn't help laughing. A single shake wouldn't do, she said. The road to Shixian was longer than their courtyard. So Gu Qing shook it again and again until she heard the bases of the stems knock together. She hastily put the box down and tightened the binding another turn. Shen Su, sitting by the door, laughed until she coughed and told her not to walk herself dizzy testing the box.

Gu Qing replaced the damaged petals herself, and Xiaoman was paid by the piece for the frames she made. Gu Qing had meant to bring up those two copper coins for the reworking, but the new boxes were lined up so neatly on the table and the eighteen flowers finally had somewhere to go, so she put the conversation off until after the meal. After they ate, Xiaoman had to hurry back to the dyehouse to collect some old material, and the words stayed there by the table. Looking at the empty bowls, Gu Qing knew there had been time to speak. She kept waiting for a moment when she could spare them both embarrassment and still avoid admitting she'd got the reckoning wrong before.

The cart going to Shixian on the twenty-eighth was one Luo Yi had booked earlier to carry incense powder, empty jars, and a small box of wooden signs. Gu Qing only remembered that they hadn't discussed a separate cartage charge when the freight company came to ask. She meant to take it out of the balance. The driver said the boxes might be light, but nothing could be stacked on them, so they needed a corner to themselves and he wouldn't charge by weight. Once they settled on twelve wen for the cart, she pressed her lips together and agreed. She left the price she'd already settled with Luo Yi as it was, even with this cost she hadn't accounted for.

The Wens were testing the new gate. The cart came in from the south, and sure enough it no longer had to head straight at the corner by the plum tree. When it was time to unload the flower boxes, though, Granny Liu still hadn't put away her carrying pole. Just as the driver was about to hurry her, Gu Qing lifted down the two boxes herself and waited until Granny Liu had moved the basin of hot beans somewhere secure before telling him to go on. The boxes made her wrists ache. She found she rather liked being able to stop for a moment without making everyone slower than her into a senseless obstacle just to show how urgent her shipment was.

Luo Yi hadn't come with the cart. She sent word through the freight company that the remaining one hundred and sixty-eight cash would be sent back on the return cart once the flowers had been inspected at Shixian. Gu Qing counted out the eighteen stems for the carter, listing the six detachable blossoms separately, and asked Xu Tan to check the wording on the receipt once more. Xu Tan looked at the packing and said it was neater than last time. She left it there, giving Gu Qing no guarantee that the flowers would arrive looking the way they did now. Gu Qing put the receipt away and left unasked the question of whether they really would be all right.

After the cart left, a wide stretch of table lay bare. Xiaoman sorted the leftovers into three piles, what could be cut, what could be taken apart, and what was useless. Gu Qing went to cook noodles and for the first time felt no need to hurry herself along with her chopsticks. Grandmother asked how much this order had made. Gu Qing opened her mouth, ran the figures through her head for a long while, then said she didn't know yet. She would have to wait for the return cart. Shen Su said they had better eat first. Once the noodles went soft, waiting for the cart would do them no good.

They laughed as they finished eating, and Gu Qing put the bamboo frame she'd used as a model under a roof beam, intending to adapt future shipments for long journeys the same way. It didn't snow that night, but the cold lingered under the tree. She pushed the window open and looked out. The plum branches reached over the new wall, seemingly indifferent to whether the blue flowers sent away that day were the color of real plum blossoms. The first pale silk plum spray under the window was still scentless. She left the window ajar to let the fragrance come in of its own accord, without reaching for any of the branches.