A Courtyard for Two

On the morning Xiaoman came to collect the pale gold flower, Gu Qing wiped the dust from its stem twice. She left the binding at the base intact and made no copy to keep. Xiaoman put the flower in the narrow box she had brought and asked how work had been going lately. Gu Qing said she worked more slowly than before. Xiaoman said she was slow too. If the new hat trim went on crooked, she had to take the whole circle off. The two of them stood in the doorway for a while talking about the work they had spoiled, and when they said goodbye there was none of the stiffness of the day they had settled the pay.

Gu Qing turned back to call her grandmother over for a look, only to find the house empty. The porridge on the stove was still warm, and only one bowl had been washed. Shen Su had left no note. She knew few characters, and when she went out she seldom went farther than the end of the lane. Gu Qing went first to the well, then to the Chens'. Auntie Chen said the old woman had gone out early with a cloth bundle and seemed to be heading toward Sister Ji's.

She was about to go after her when her sleeve knocked over an empty bowl by the stove. It rolled across the floor to the foot of the cabinet without breaking. She stooped to pick it up. When she could not reach it, she dragged out the whole cabinet, exposing years of greasy grime and cobwebs in one go. An old copper button lay underneath, from her father’s blue cloth shirt. She recognized it, and when she picked it up, a layer of sticky dust clung to her fingertip.

Gu Qing sat on the little stool until the urgency in her chest eased. Her grandmother had gone somewhere with people around. She wasn't a needle left outside that had to be found right away. Gu Qing swept out what lay under the cupboard bit by bit, broken fan ribs, half a jujube pit, bits of dough hardened to stone. As she swept, it seemed to her that these things had been here as long as she had, and each had somehow found its own place to hide.

Shen Su returned near midday, carrying a small jar of fermented black beans and a ball of gray cloth. Sister Ji had taken the cloth out of use, but its edges were still sound, and she wanted to patch Aunt Chen's torn pillow with it. Gu Qing asked whether she had eaten. The old woman said they had made flatbreads there and she had eaten one. Gu Qing was about to ask why she had not called her, but seeing the right elbow her grandmother could not raise while taking off her outer garment, she asked instead where the cloth should go for now.

“Put it at the foot of my bed. Don't go cutting it up for scraps again.”

Gu Qing said all right. She ate her warm porridge alone while Shen Su sat outside the kitchen door picking old threads out of a piece of cloth. Neither hurried to turn this meal apart into a reunion. When she'd eaten, Gu Qing brought water and asked if they should wipe the wall behind the cupboard now that it had been moved. The old woman said the part above the firebox was out of reach and could wait. They could do the part lower down.

They worked all afternoon. Gu Qing stood on a stool wiping away soot while Shen Su held it steady. She insisted that Grandmother stop holding it after a while and stepped down to change the water. The moment she turned her back, the old woman reached for the blackest crack with the long brush. The brush knocked down a little clump of dust, which landed right on the tip of her nose. They both sneezed at the same time. Gu Qing was the first to double over laughing and sloshed water onto her own shoes. Shen Su said she laughed like a gosling, then couldn't help laughing along.

One of the cupboard's feet was uneven, and it turned out that a piece of pattern paper folded four times had been propping it up all along. Gu Qing pulled it out. On the back was a red duck from her childhood, with a lopsided “青” (Qing) on its belly. She couldn't remember how old she'd been when she drew it, but her grandmother remembered how they couldn't afford red dye then. Gu Qing had soaked some faded red paper from the door in a bowl, dyed herself a grayish red duck, and slept with it in her arms all night. The next morning there had been a red patch on the pillow and another on her face.

“Did you scold me for it back then?”

“No.” Shen Su said it too quickly.

Gu Qing turned to look at her, and her grandmother’s mouth gave way first. “I did. I said if you made another one, I wouldn't give you any paper.” She folded the old drawing along its original creases. “Then you stole a medicine wrapper and made an even uglier one.”

Gu Qing said apparently she'd shown great promise even as a child, which made the old woman take up the damp cloth to swat her. She made a point of staying where she was and got a black streak across her forehead. When she tried to wipe it off, she only made it wider. As they came out of the kitchen, a cat in the courtyard was sniffing the brushes they'd put out to dry. It didn't run when it saw them. Its tail swept past the leg of the table they'd just wiped clean.

On the fifteenth of the second month, Gu Qing worked on samples in the courtyard, with just one tray of unfinished flowers laid out. Grandmother asked if she would still let her do any work, and Gu Qing looked up at her knuckles. Shen Su wound a coarse stem halfway and waved it for her to see. “I can do this. I can't see the little dark centers clearly. I'll finish three stems, then take the cloth to Qingniang.”

“Do two, then take a rest.” Gu Qing pressed her tongue against her teeth after she said it. “See if your hands are cold.”

Shen Su bent her head and went on winding the thread. Gu Qing moved the brazier a little closer and left the number as it was. The third stem was wrapped too loosely. The old woman unwound and fixed it herself, unwilling to slip it into the tray Gu Qing was to deliver. When she finished, she held up the three stems and asked how they would count at the old rate per batch. What Gu Qing felt first was awkwardness at seeing her own grandmother hold out her hand for money in the courtyard they shared.

She counted out two cash and set them by her grandmother’s hand. Shen Su slipped them straight onto her little string of coins. Gu Qing wanted to say that she ought to give her money for the household anyway, but the little string had grown only a touch longer, and the old woman lifted it and weighed it in her hand as though it were something she had just made. After that, Grandmother took a few batches of rough work when she felt like it and left them when she did not, with no daily quota. They still ate together, and the rice came out of the household money Gu Qing managed. Those two coins bought no good temper from Grandmother and repaid none of the years she had spent raising her.

When Shen Su went out in the afternoons, Gu Qing still looked up at first whenever the door made a sound. It took two pricks of the needle before she gradually stopped listening for it. At dusk she cooked one bowl of noodles and put another on when her grandmother came home, so they wouldn't sit soaking in water and turn to mush. Shen Su sometimes brought back half a radish and sometimes brought nothing. She might just say that the daughter of that family in the south of town was about to marry and that she'd seen all the old faces. When she'd finished, Gu Qing would tell her how the pale gold flowers had finally stood up to bending. They had more to talk about than whether business was good or bad.

There was a day when Gu Qing went out and failed to get back in time herself. She went to Yao’s shop to have a sample checked, and Madam Han took her to see a drying rack nearby. The two got to talking and lost track of the hour. Gu Qing only noticed how dark it was when she entered Locust Lane. She had already pictured Grandmother sitting beside a cold stove, but when she pushed open the door, she smelled fried fermented black beans. Shen Su was eating her own supper from a little dish by the kitchen door. Gu Qing’s portion was covered in the pot, with a few embers still glowing underneath.

“I forgot to say I'd be late,” Gu Qing said.

The old woman nodded and moved a stool out for her without declaring that she couldn't go out again tomorrow. Gu Qing sat and looked at the dish of fermented black beans. There was a sprinkling of chopped spicy radish in it, a flavor she had disliked since childhood. She tried a little and it stung the corners of her eyes red. Shen Su hurried to give her water, laughing at her for pretending she could handle it. Gu Qing suddenly remembered that when her mother was alive, there had always been a dish like this at home. She and her father found it too hot, and only her grandmother and mother ate it. After her mother was gone, her grandmother stopped frying a separate dish, and Gu Qing had assumed she no longer liked it either.

She kept the thought to herself and picked up one more little piece, set it carefully at the edge of her rice, and ate it a bit at a time. When she went to buy vegetables the next day, she asked Sister Ji which days the hot pickled radish stall opened, without buying a whole jar of it to put by for the old woman. She told Shen Su where it was when she got home. Her grandmother said she knew the place and would go herself the next time the stall was there. That afternoon there was a glossy red chili in the bamboo basket by the window, hanging beside the scallion leaves. When the wind came, each color swayed a little on its own.

On the seventeenth, the two of them still had an argument. Gu Qing thought her grandmother had promised to help sort thread needed that afternoon. Instead, the old woman bought a small bamboo blind with her own money and spent a quarter-hour trying to hang it beside the bed to block the western sun below the window. Gu Qing could not help asking what was so urgent about a strip of shade when she was rushing to finish samples. Shen Su said she had promised to sort after a meal, without saying which meal. Even as she said it, she knew she was being slippery. Holding the blind, she kept her face as stern as in the days when she forbade children to dye paper recklessly.

Gu Qing had plenty of arguments ready, but at the sight of her grandmother's face she suddenly laughed: “You dodge work too.”

Shen Su turned the bamboo blind sideways to measure it. Her voice dropped a little. “Today I wanted to hang this first.”

In the end, Gu Qing did not hang the blind at the height she herself thought level. Holding the end the old woman indicated, she fixed the hook a little lower. The bottom of the blind touched the sill and caught slightly when raised. Her grandmother said she could reach it this way. Once it was hung, she sat back at the table. Gu Qing lit a separate little open oil lamp for her and divided the coarse thread into two balls, without pushing the fine-needle tray toward her.

Toward evening, Zhou Jiping came to collect a length of measuring cord he had left behind. Standing at the door, he noticed an open space in the kitchen and asked whether they had replaced a cabinet. Gu Qing said people stopped recognizing an old cabinet once its dust was wiped away. He touched a finger to his forehead and wondered what would happen if he gave himself a wipe too. Gu Qing said, “Wash the ink off your sleeve first.” Only when he looked down did he notice that the ink had already rubbed onto the back of his hand, and he had now pressed another spot onto his forehead. Her grandmother saw him from the window and laughed so hard she wound a loop of thread the wrong way.

After he left, Shen Su asked why he had so much more to say than he’d had in the eleventh month. Had the spring sun got to him through his umbrellas? Gu Qing refused to answer and bent her head over the base she was tying onto a flower. Her face grew hot, but her hands grew lighter. The petals opened layer by layer without a deep white mark pressed into them.

On the nineteenth, she put the first tray of new designs in the courtyard to test them in the wind. Grandmother's bamboo blind was half lowered, its shadow lying across the old duck made of patterned paper. She wanted to replace the paper padding beneath the cabinet, but Shen Su said the old piece was just the right thickness and need not be changed. Gu Qing pushed it firmly into place and pressed her palm on the cabinet until all four feet sat steady. The space cleared in the kitchen let two people pass one another. When Grandmother brought in the soup, she stepped aside, and not a drop spilled.