The First Time She Wasn’t Allowed to Start Over

On the third, fog rose in Yunjin. Gu Qing held her hand out beyond the covered walkway. A film of damp soon settled on her palm, but when she drew it back she still told herself it couldn't stay damp for five days straight. Between the stems they had begun preparing on the twenty-fifth, the flower centers saved from before, and the rough work Xiaoman had done as agreed, more than forty of the eighty sprays had taken shape. The rest lay scattered across four shallow trays like four pieces of a garment that had yet to be sewn together.

Gu Qing had worked out the days in charcoal on paper, originally setting aside the last two for drying, sorting, and packing. The two nights her grandmother had spent away, the time Gu Qing had spent bathing her eye and cooking, and several rounds of color trials had eaten up one of those days. She was reluctant to cut back on the colors again. This was the first delivery to a big shop under her own name, and if she brought only the easiest designs, from then on people would think easy designs were all she knew. So she swapped two trays of warm red petals for the new pale gold and decided to press a deeper crease into the folded edges.

Xiaoman looked at the paper pattern and said the original petals curled outward; if the folds were deeper, the tips would become stiff. “This layer of starch mustn’t be any thicker.” She flicked a dried petal lightly with her fingernail. The thin sound it made revealed its brittleness. Gu Qing knew she had a point, but disliked the way she sounded as though she were inspecting her work. She knocked the starch spoon against the rim of the bowl. “Large flowers need to hold their shape. After a journey in a box, all the soft ones collapse. Do it my way first.”

It was hardly the first time she had learned what damp could do. The blue plum blossom test box was on the high cabinet, with a dye stain in one corner that had never washed out. She took it down to show Xiaoman, saying she had learned how to let air through. This time she had left space between every layer and would leave the outer box partly open. Xiaoman rested a finger on the corner and almost said that damp inside and stale air outside were two different problems. Seeing Gu Qing waiting to collect the samples, she just put the box back.

Xiaoman had set aside another pale gold spray, with no second coat of stiffening paste. She had made it higher on one side than the other. The high side curled outward, and the low side showed a little of the center. Beside a hat, it looked as though the wind had just brushed past it. Gu Qing slipped it in among the eighty sprays and saw at a glance that the sides were uneven. She drew it out and folded the high side inward. Xiaoman suddenly reached out and held down the stem.

“I'm keeping this one.”

“It's already been cut out, and you still want to take it away?”

“Deduct the material from my half day’s pay. If you want a neat one, there’s another cut to the same shape.”

Gu Qing let go. She could have said there was no need to deduct the cost of one sample, but what came out was, “Make sure you write it down, then.” Xiaoman slipped the little flower into her sleeve pocket without putting it in her hair. She still finished three batches of rough stems that afternoon, and when she stood up at the appointed hour, Gu Qing asked if she could stay another quarter hour. Xiaoman said the hat trim shop was trying out a new design that day and she had to go take measurements. Gu Qing sat at the table and suddenly hated that shop she had yet to set foot in.

She waited until Xiaoman had gone, then redid the rest of the outward-curled petals to make them symmetrical. There was a fierce satisfaction in the work. At last she could stop explaining. At last every stem looked as if it had come from the same pair of hands. By the twelfth stem the ring of petals was too stiff to turn back. She held it over steam for a moment and folded it again. It held after cooling, but the fold showed white. She put that stem in the darkest spot and decided to sort through the flowers again when it was time to pack them.

Shen Su came to the doorway and watched for a while, without saying how things had been done in the old days. She asked what they should have for supper. Gu Qing said anything would do. So the old woman cooked rice with beans and added diced radish. When she called Gu Qing to eat, Gu Qing said she still had two stems to do. The second time, she only murmured in answer. Shen Su served herself a bowl, ate, and covered the other bowl in the pot. She was done sitting there waiting for it to go cold. By the time Gu Qing finished and lifted the cover, the rice was no longer hot. She ate feeling wronged. After all, it was for both their futures that she was working so hard.

On the fourth, someone from Yao’s shop came to take a sample stem to show a customer. Her surname was Han. She was in charge of drying flowers in the back courtyard and always wore a copper thimble worn smooth. Seeing red and gold flowers hanging all along the Gu family’s veranda, she said the customers would be sitting at the fair banquet until late and asked if scented powder could be sewn into the flower bases. It needn't smell exactly like a real blossom. A trace of scent when they held it close would do.

Gu Qing replied, “I can make a separate sachet, but I can't say the flower itself is scented. The powder will leave a mark if it gets on the silk, and changing it will ruin the base when you take it apart.”

Madam Han said she had only come to ask and could make no promises for the customer. She took the sample, rubbed a petal lightly between her fingers, and said the flowers had to be given enough days to dry. Gu Qing nodded. Once Han was gone, it struck her that it sounded like something Xiaoman had asked her to pass along. She knew she had no grounds for thinking so, but still moved the tray of new flowers close to the charcoal brazier, thinking that if they dried all the way through, no one could find fault with them.

The charcoal brazier was some way off, but all the heat came from one side. She turned the tray every few minutes. The outer layer soon dried, but the wet paste between the overlapping petals stayed sticky. That night she tried closing up one blossom. A faint sour smell came from its center, and she took it apart at once. The edges of the petals frayed when she pulled them apart, so they could no longer go into the first batch. She hid the little stack of ruined petals under her tea bowl, where her grandmother wouldn't see, and began cutting new ones from the scraps.

On the morning of the fifth, Zhou Jiping passed by to collect the wooden ruler he had lent her. Gu Qing had set out three rows of stools in the yard and was trying to move her trays along with the sunlight. The winter sun only grazed the top of the wall, and the freshly set-out trays were back in shadow in less than two hours. Seeing her chase the light, Zhou Jiping reached for the heaviest tray. She told him to leave it alone. His hands stopped in midair, then he righted an overturned empty stool and asked where it could go.

“Have you any free space under your eaves?” she asked.

“We’ve had umbrellas drying after oiling these past two days. The smell’s strong. The dye shop next door is damp too.”

Hearing that he had no room either, she felt less annoyed and laughed at herself for imagining the whole lane as one empty drying rack. He helped tie two bamboo poles to the backs of the stools so the trays could rest at a slight angle and more light could reach the lowest layer. As he was leaving, he pointed at the brazier. “It warms you up close, but the flowers might not stand it.” She let him have his say and moved the brazier back beside the stove.

The sun came out for half the afternoon that day. Shen Su brought a kettle of hot water into the courtyard. Gu Qing crouched to turn the trays while her grandmother sat beside her peeling garlic. Their shadows shrank inch by inch toward the foot of the well platform, and for the first time Gu Qing saw clearly that the pale gold flowers had a different sheen from the day before. Where they had dried they shone, and where the paste was thick they looked stiff. She pulled out a few of the stems she had altered most, meaning to redo them, then glanced again at the date she had marked, the eighth, and finally stopped.

She could see the difference perfectly well. She was afraid that if she yielded this time, nobody would ever trust her to make two hundred stems again. She was also afraid Yao Liao would ask why she was still changing things this late and say she'd been too quick to agree in the first place. She put those stems to her right and kept only the ones that genuinely needed no more work on her left. When she counted them that night, there were only forty-four stems on the left.

If she sent word now and admitted this was all she could deliver in the first batch, things would go no further wrong. She carried the lamp to the door, having even worked out when the person from Yao’s shop would come down the lane tomorrow to collect the order. Outside the courtyard came the clatter of Auntie Chen taking in her drying rack, followed by the Wen household calling out their count as they moved goods. Gu Qing listened until they reached eighty, then lowered her head, carried the lamp back to the table, and began counting the thirty-six stems on the right again.

Someone else came to buy flowers that night. It was the woman who milled flour, who had once bought camellias in the west market and wanted something to add to her younger sister’s bridal things. She wanted only one red spray. Gu Qing said this batch was spoken for and brought out the old samples from the cabinet. The woman picked out the earliest white plum spray, decided white wouldn’t do, and handed it back. She stood there a moment before leaving. Gu Qing saw her to the door and almost said she could have one ready in two days, then swallowed the words. She found she couldn’t promise even one red flower now.

Outside, the woman had just tied down the flour sack on her cart. Her fingers were so cold she could hardly bend them. Gu Qing threaded the end of the cord through for her and heard her say that her sister disliked bright red and wanted a faded red instead, like a lined jacket worn for two years. Gu Qing looked up. She suddenly remembered that the flowers on the right, the ones she had made darker, had once been just that shade of faded red. She asked if the woman wanted to come back the day after tomorrow. The woman shook her head. The auspicious day wouldn't wait, so she would look elsewhere. The wheels crunched over thin ice, sending splinters against the toes of Gu Qing’s shoes. She stood there until the cart turned the corner, then went back inside. She left the tray of flowers intact.

On the afternoon of the sixth, she still had Xiaoman come as arranged to tie on the last of the supports. Xiaoman took the sprays one by one and noticed that some stems had already been undone twice, but asked nothing more. Gu Qing was the first to ask why she hadn’t been wearing the pale gold flower these past few days. Xiaoman said she had worn it to the hat shop, where they had kept it as a color sample, and she could take it back whenever she liked. Gu Qing’s throat tightened. She said the materials had come from her own stock, and all she had agreed to was that Xiaoman could keep the flower for herself. She had said nothing about giving it to someone to sell.

Xiaoman finished binding the stem in her hands before she spoke. “I didn't sell it. You deducted the cost of the materials, so I don't owe you for them either.”

Gu Qing had no reply. She counted out six cash and put them at the edge of the worktable. Xiaoman took them and drew three short lines on a scrap of paper in front of her. That little sound upset Gu Qing more than an argument would have. She wanted to say that even though Yao’s shop had put down only her own name, there would surely be other chances. She opened her mouth, saw that Xiaoman had already slipped her needle into her sleeve pocket, and closed it again.

On the night of the seventh, eighty flowers lay divided among four old boxes. The dividers let air through, the stems were secured, and the outer bindings were no longer pulled tight. Gu Qing took care with every step she could get right. The thirty-six heavily starched flowers were scattered among the boxes. She had held back from putting them in a box of their own, as if that left her with one fewer conspicuous mistake. Her grandmother brought the lamp over, and Gu Qing shielded the corner of the box with her hand for fear oil might drip in. The lamplight withdrew, and the pale gold flowers still gave off a stiff gleam in the dark. As the lid came down, a very thin flake fell onto the back of her hand. She brushed it into her palm and closed her fist around it.