Putting a Name on Paper

Yao Liao brought a whole box of samples. Inside were camellias, small plum blossom hairpins, and several kinds of tiny flowers Gu Qing couldn't put a name to. Most were warm red or pale gold, with only two trial stems in blue. Yao Liao sorted them by kind and said the Spring Flower Fair was set for around the twenty-sixth of the third month. Goods for the outlying counties would go first, and orders nearer at hand in the city could wait a little longer. She wanted two hundred stems in three deliveries. There was no need to fill her cabinet all on the same day.

Gu Qing looked first at the quantities, then at the dates. Eighty sprigs for the first delivery, before the eighth of the second month; sixty more on the twenty-fifth of the second month; the final sixty on the twenty-fifth of the third month. Some old petals in warm colors could be matched up in advance, and the ordinary sprigs were not all as complicated as Luo Yi’s blue flowers. She laid out the dates in her mind, one stretch at a time. It would be hard, but not beyond reach. If Xiao Man came a little more often than before, her grandmother could still wind thread, and she kept a little more time at night, two hundred sprigs would not be a mountain she could only gaze up at.

Yao Liao said she would pay six cash a stem. The flower heads had to match the approved designs and quantities, with no last-minute additions or cuts. Crushed flowers and ones that shed dye couldn't go in with the rest. If Gu Qing really needed to change a delivery date, she should say so early, before the cart came to collect and Yao had to find someone else. She would advance a hundred and sixty cash, then deduct it from the price as each batch passed inspection and settle the balance on receipt. She wouldn't hold back the whole payment while waiting for the next batch. At the mention of a hundred and sixty cash, Gu Qing was already thinking of the bolt of pale gold silk at Sister Ji's shop. It would buy at least half the materials she needed for the first delivery.

She asked if all two hundred stems would carry the Liaohua Ji name. Yao Liao took a sample tag out of the box. The shop had its name, she said, and the flower supplier could be named too. If a new design sold well and customers came back asking for it, knowing who made it was easier than asking everyone to make changes based on a vague description. The tag had a blank space just big enough for the two characters 顾家, meaning the Gu household. Gu Qing pressed the paper to her palm, more afraid of creasing it than she was of creasing the hundred and sixty wen she'd just been given.

Xiaoman sat at an outer corner of the table, helping her set the samples steadily in place one by one. The blue one still used petals turned outward, while the warm red one had been changed to use the same method of gathering the base. Changing colors had not erased the original idea. After looking them over, Yao Liao asked whether these were all new designs from the Gu family. Gu Qing saw Xiaoman’s fingers still resting beneath one flower and suddenly remembered the gray hat at the hat stall in South Alley, and Xiaoman’s smile when other women customers touched the flowers.

“We make them on our end,” she said, then added after a moment, “She helps with some of the rough work. I settle the final design.”

Xiaoman drew her hand back from under the flowers. Yao Liao let the matter rest and left the tag without any claim that Gu Qing was the sole maker. She simply told her to write her name clearly, so if someone else sold a different version of the design later, they could tell whose was whose. Gu Qing took up the brush. She wrote 顾 (Gu) more steadily than when she had acknowledged the wall boundary, though the last stroke of 青 (Qing) was still a little tight. As the ink spread into the paper, she felt she finally had something she could keep without first giving her grandmother's name.

Only after Yao Liao left did Xiaoman ask whether she would be needed all day to make the flowers. Gu Qing said it would be best if she could put in more time over the next few days. If they got the first batch done in time, things would ease up. Xiaoman took a moment before asking where that left her work at the dyehouse. Gu Qing said she could let the person in charge of supplies know and take a few days off for now. Once the flower work steadied, she might not have to keep running back and forth. The words came so easily that even Gu Qing felt she was saving Xiaoman the trouble.

“I never said I was leaving the dyehouse,” Xiaoman said.

Gu Qing was taken aback. She said she had never forbidden her to go and was only talking it over. Xiaoman closed the lid of the empty box and said she would come for half a day tomorrow as before. If Gu Qing wanted any more time, she would have to ask in advance what day Xiaoman could come. She left the blue sample at the table, but kept the small paper packet in her own pocket. A bit of colored silk showed at the opening. Gu Qing looked twice and let the question of borrowing it go.

The night she set the money by the clothes chest, Gu Qing kept it separate from the family's old savings. After rice and vegetables, new materials, and clothes for the end of the year, with a little added back from recent sales, there were now about two hundred and sixty wen she could use. She had meant to set aside a packet from that sum and call it the Jiangnan money. Only when she laid out the new order did she see that every coin first had to go where the flowers went. If she bought the wrong material, or the shipment missed the returning cart, the hundred and sixty wen in advance was hardly a gift.

Grandmother was unpicking some old cotton beside her. Hearing the schedule, she asked if two half days of someone else's time could really be counted as one whole day. Gu Qing replied rather sharply that she'd already said she'd ask people separately. She held up the sample flower and said that as long as the rough work was done first, she'd take care of the fine work herself and wouldn't have Grandmother threading a needle every night. Shen Su didn't ask again. She felt the little knot at the heart of the flower and said after a while that even if the nights were hers, Gu Qing couldn't expect to take up all her days.

Gu Qing grew irritated listening to her and counted the advance into another bowl. She hadn't asked her grandmother to spend any of her own savings. Surely that meant she was taking responsibility herself, without having to hear yet again whether she could finish in time. But as she cleared the table that night, she left twenty unwrapped bamboo stems in the good light where her grandmother sat. She hadn't asked for help, yet her hands seemed already to have arranged the next morning for them both.

When she went to Sister Ji's shop for materials, she took the sample tag with her. Sister Ji glanced at the spot where Gu Qing's name was written and said keeping a name on paper and keeping money in your hands could be two very different struggles. Gu Qing didn't like hearing it. She put the advance down at once and said she was buying what she needed for the first batch, without taking a whole bolt on credit. Sister Ji didn't put on a different smile just because Gu Qing had talked back. She worked out what she needed from the width of the silk, then showed her how to cut it so she'd have a piece left over.

The bolt of pale gold silk was expensive. Gu Qing couldn't pay for it all at once and had little wish to tie up all her old savings in one color. She asked whether she could take what she needed now and settle the balance in ten days. Sister Ji looked over the amount and said she could let sixty cash go on credit. Any purchases after the due date would have to be paid for on the spot. She had suppliers of her own who came to collect. Being an old friend of Grandmother's could only carry an account so far. Gu Qing agreed and signed with the character 顾 (Gu), which she knew how to write. The name that had only just begun to shine for her suddenly had a little weight to it, enough to hold her fast.

On the way home she stopped at a paper and ink stall to ask whether small characters could be carved into a stamp. The stallkeeper said if it was only two characters, she might as well write them herself. After a dozen or so times she'd know how to write them well, and it would cost less than keeping a stamp just for the sake of appearances. Gu Qing was surprised at how disappointed she felt. The little wooden stamp she'd pictured made it seem as if she already had an established shop. The characters she wrote by hand still seemed like something left on deposit. She turned to go, then bought two sheets of the plainest dry paper so she could wrap the sample tag properly first.

As she crossed the south bridge, Zhou Jiping was carrying a bundle of long bamboo poles with someone and couldn't stop to talk. He just nodded to her. She waited by the road, wanting to tell him she had taken an order for two hundred stems. After a while it began to feel like when she was little and held up a finished flower, refusing to go inside until someone had seen it. She didn't wait for him to put the bamboo down. She tucked the paper into her sleeve and walked slowly home along the river.

When the new silk came into the house, sunlight reached a chi past the threshold. Gu Qing could not bear to cut it straight away. She held up the length of pale gold and the light shone through the silk onto her fingers, brightening even the cuff of her old sleeve. Grandmother watched from the bed and said the color would make a lovely garment too. Gu Qing was about to say it was all for customers, but her hand had already passed the silk around her shoulder. She draped it loosely over herself and went to look in the bronze mirror.

The mirror was scratched with age and gave a hazy reflection, yet the pale gold set her face and hair clearly apart. Gu Qing raised one hand as though she were already wearing a light new robe. As she brought her fingers back to her shoulder, she saw the little row of hard spots the needle had worn into her fingertips. She suddenly laughed and said that if she actually wore this, even when she went to draw water she'd have to tell the well first to mind its splashing.

Shen Su laughed too and told her not to tug it about. The fabric’s edge was not yet even; if she draped it crookedly, the customer’s two hundred stems might end up half a stem short. Gu Qing took the fabric off, still carrying inside her that little brightness of wearing it. She asked whether her grandmother had worn the finest silk when young. Shen Su said she had made it up for others. When it came to herself, she always felt that once worn, it could no longer be unpicked for another use, and could not bear the expense. After speaking, she reached out to feel the length of fabric, but did not drape it over her own shoulders.

Gu Qing looked at her, then gently laid the other end across her grandmother’s knees and told her to sit and see how it looked. That hardly counted as cutting it. Each held one end of the same length of silk, with only enough sunlight to brighten the middle. This time her grandmother let it rest there and looked down at it a little longer. Only when they heard Xiaoman’s footsteps outside did they spread the silk flat again and measure it inch by inch from the bright part, to the same dimensions they had meant to cut.

That afternoon, Xiaoman came for just half a day as arranged. After finishing three lots of rough work, she asked whether they still needed to try the colors today. If they did, she would do one less lot of the other work. Looking at the new order, Gu Qing wanted most to say that a trial would hardly take any time, but she left it for tomorrow all the same. Before she finished for the day, Xiaoman left one petal of each of her three designs on a little dish. One was drawn in tight, one turned outward, and one was turned back only halfway, laid out in an order of her own.

Gu Qing asked if all three petals could count as approved samples. Xiaoman said, “See for yourself. The final design is yours to choose.” Gu Qing had said much the same to Yao Liao first, and now the words had come back to her unchanged. Xiaoman spoke lightly, but they landed on the table heavier than the three pieces of silk. Gu Qing reached to move the outward-curled one to the middle, then stopped. She left them in the order Xiaoman had chosen.

On the twenty-fourth she finished writing her first formal sample tag, putting a small number underneath for each sprig so she could tell them apart. For the supplier she still wrote Gu Qing, with no sign of Xiaoman’s name beside it. She told herself there would be time to sort out who had thought up which petal after they’d done this batch well. Some things couldn’t necessarily be set down clearly on the first scrap of paper. She stuck it to the inside wall where she could see it whenever she looked up. It stood out far more than the small gray mark on the new wall outside.

Her grandmother was already asleep that night, and the warm red on the table still needed mixing. Gu Qing picked up a petal and suddenly wanted very much to smell it, though she knew perfectly well that silk had none of a real flower's fragrance. She caught a little paste and the acrid smell of fresh dye. The old plum outside the wall no longer scented the room. She lowered the petal, sat back down under the lamp, and began the first spring flower she would send out with her own name attached.