The Plum Tree's Summer Shade

On the morning of the seventh day of the sixth month, Gu Qing stopped at the mouth of the lane. The first thing she saw was Granny Liu’s bean stall. There was a new carrying pole, pale in color and leaning against the wall, while the old pole, worn black, had been put to use propping up the canopy. Granny Liu looked up and called out that they were back, her hands still busy ladling beans for a customer. Nobody had made a point of waiting at the door for them, and nobody asked how many strings of cash the journey had been worth.

Gu Qing carried the bedroll for Grandmother. At their door she saw that the grass beside it had grown a little higher. The key turned in her hand and the door opened smoothly. The smell of damp stone and old wood came out to meet her. The yard was narrower than she remembered and dearer than any room in the inns. Shen Su stayed out by the well to look at the tree, tipping her brim up and searching for the plum leaves the way she had looked for the red of the lotus before they left.

The leaves were still there. Insects had chewed holes in them, and the leaves on one little branch near the wall had a yellow cast. Her grandmother frowned at once, and Gu Qing tensed too. Sister Ma, passing by with a meal to deliver, heard them and wheeled her cart over. She said Gardener Qiu had looked at that spot and told her to leave it alone for the time being. She had given it too little water a couple of times in the heat, then added more as she'd been shown, and the new shoot was still there. She pointed it out to them. A tender leaf at the tip of a slender twig had opened, bright and glossy. It lacked the beauty of the winter blossoms, but it was alive.

Shen Su went closer and reached toward a yellow leaf, but stopped just short of it and touched one the insects had spared. She didn't ask who'd missed a day, and Sister Ma offered no apology for any of the damaged leaves. Gu Qing set the old bucket at her feet back in its place and bent to look at the drain. The channel was clean, with fresh sweep marks beside the two flat stones at the outlet. She straightened and thanked Sister Ma. This time she was thanking her for the work she'd put in day after day, beyond the words that had let Gu Qing go away.

Aunt Chen didn't come until noon. She'd been back from her daughter's for only a few days and was a little more tanned, but her smile was lively. She didn't start by asking how the lotuses had flowered. Instead she complained that Sister Ma had hung the cloth out so roughly she'd stretched one of her old pieces. Sister Ma denied it and said the cloth had been crooked to begin with. After a couple of words back and forth, both women laughed. Gu Qing waited until they were done and asked whether the rest of the tending money had been settled. Aunt Chen said they'd split it by the days each had worked without waiting for her to get back, and spread out the little tally marks for her to see. Gu Qing looked them over, put the tally away, and left the payment at that.

Grandmother brought out the box with the gray lotus, and the three of them crowded around the window to look. The flower had shifted since they pressed it at the inn, and one of its tips had bent. Auntie Chen laughed and asked why they had gone all that way to bring back a gray thing like that. Shen Su would have none of it. She showed them with her hands how big the real flower had been, and said it was much paler and there was more than red along the water. When she came to the half-open flower, she paused and looked out the window, as though some of that water still lingered behind the plum branches.

Auntie Chen realized she wasn't trying to sell her a sample, so she stopped pinching the gray lotus, pulled up a stool, and sat down to listen. Gu Qing heated water and let her grandmother tell it in her own way. From behind the kitchen door, she heard the old woman describe how good the rice cakes were and how the deck rocked. The only thing she cut short, by half, was the time she'd stood still on the gangplank. Gu Qing smiled and left it alone in front of company. Only when they closed the door that night did she ask whether the plank had suddenly steadied all by itself. Shen Su gave her a glare and said an old woman had to be left a little courage.

The two of them rested for two days first, without immediately exchanging the three hundred cash at home for a whole piece of new silk. After their return, they checked the travel expenses: one hundred and sixty-three remained. Some of the things they had taken needed attention too. The bedding roll had grown damp and needed airing; the worn-open soles needed stitching. These were all consequences of that journey left in their hands. Gu Qing put part of the remaining money toward household expenses and kept the rest as a reserve against the next need, so they would not be caught unprepared. She no longer strung it all together merely to show it to others.

On their second night home, Shen Su woke partway through the night and suddenly called Gu Qing's name. Gu Qing sat up at once, thinking her grandmother needed heat for her knee again, but the old woman only said she'd heard the well rope outside, as if someone were drawing water. Gu Qing threw on a robe and went to look. The wind had blown the little dipper that usually hung there against the bucket. She set it firmly in place and came back to tell her. Her grandmother gave a soft murmur and lay back down. A little later she said how quiet the nights were at home. Gu Qing laughed, because the sound of carts at the Wens' hadn't even died away.

“I know this quiet,” Shen Su said.

Gu Qing didn't answer and slowly lay back down in her own place. The sound of those leaves on the water was far away now, though it was a different kind of distance from never having heard them. She put up a hand to feel for her ribbon. The new pale apricot one had already been washed and hung to dry by the window, and her fingertips touched only her loose hair. She very much wanted to ask her grandmother whether she would like to go somewhere else next, but she was afraid that asking would crowd out the trip they hadn't quite put away. In the end she saved the words for another time. The next morning the old woman woke and cooked two bowls of rather bland bean porridge. She missed the pinch of dried vegetables they'd had in Nanpu, so Gu Qing went next door to ask for some pickles. They each added half a chopstickful, ate, and went back to sleep for a little while.

On the tenth she went to Yao's shop, just hoping to find a quiet moment to talk about the designs she had on hand. Yao Liao was checking Madam Meng's delivery. The pomegranate flowers, rich with red and green, really were selling well, and there had been another order after the sample display. Standing nearby, Gu Qing found her fingers tightening on the corner of her bundle. So that four-hundred-coin order had turned into even more. Madam Meng looked up and greeted her, asking how things had been in the south. Gu Qing said they'd been good, then paused and said she'd seen real lotuses.

Yao Liao showed her several new hats. If they needed small flowers to go with them, she could ask whether Gu Qing wanted the work, but that customer who was always in a hurry and whom Gu Qing used to deal with had already been passed to Madam Meng. She couldn't switch back just because Gu Qing had returned. Gu Qing agreed, her voice lower than she'd expected. She was out of sorts all the way home. Only when she saw her grandmother shelling beans in the doorway did she say what was bothering her. Shen Su listened, then asked if, had she stayed, she would be sitting here today wishing she hadn't let another summer go by. Gu Qing took a handful of beans and shelled them for a while before saying she would.

That evening she made no claim that this settled her regrets. The red of Madam Meng's pomegranate flower still glowed in her mind, and so did the pale bloom in the middle of the water. There was room for both. She picked out a bean she'd spoiled in shelling and kept going. The next day she still went to buy a little new thread and left it to others to reckon what that order might earn.

Xiaoman came the day after next, bringing a hat that needed its clasp altered and a packet of homemade chilled cakes. Gu Qing first told her about the gray-blue flower on the boat home. Xiaoman's eyes lit up. She immediately asked if it had sat straight and whether it had drooped too far in the wind. Gu Qing said it had sat straight, and so had the label behind the clasp. She'd only had to turn it over to see it. They both laughed. Then Xiaoman took out her new design. The curled petal opened farther and the gap she had left was bolder. This time Gu Qing let it be.

She drew the veins on the underside of a lotus leaf on a piece of paper. Without saying it had to be done that way, she asked Xiaoman which part might work as a hat trim. Xiaoman lengthened one of the curves. Gu Qing held her hand over part of it to see how it looked and said she didn't like it, that it reached too far and would be hard to bring back in. Xiaoman took the scrap of paper and turned it around, and suddenly it looked like a leaf turning in the air. They argued until her grandmother called them to eat. They were in no hurry to decide who had won. They clipped their versions separately and agreed to try again, with no rush to sell them that very night.

At dusk on the eleventh, Gu Qing went to the Zhous' new shop. The awning had been fixed and umbrellas hung in rows at the entrance. For the first time she went in through the front door instead of the back door where deliveries came in. Lu Ying was adding up the day's receipts and expenses. She tipped her chin toward the back and let Gu Qing go in without calling out for her. Zhou Jiping was by the window, nailing an umbrella handle in place. He looked up at the footsteps, the nail in his hand hanging still for a long moment before he slowly put it down.

Gu Qing took out the light umbrella. A rough piece of wood had snagged its rim on the journey and left a small tear. She asked first whether it could be mended, leaving aside how many times she'd used it. Zhou Jiping opened it up, pointed at the tear, and said it could, though it would leave a slightly darker patch. She told him to leave the patch and keep the rest of the canopy, and asked how much. Two copper coins. She paid, and right there in front of her he cut a small piece, pasted it in place from underneath, and gently pressed it flat.

Standing beside him and watching his hands, she suddenly remembered all the times she had wanted to hurry home. He asked how many lotuses she had seen. She said there hadn't been many, but there was one she couldn't count. He laughed and asked her to tell him about it. She gestured as she spoke, starting with how much bigger the blossom was than the gray lotus and going on to how her grandmother fell asleep half a day later. Before long she was laughing too, having forgotten to begin with everything the trip had cost and gained that needed to be reckoned up.

When Zhou Jiping had heard her out, he set the mended umbrella under the window to dry. He left his hand at the edge of the table a moment longer, palm up. Gu Qing looked at it and reached out to put her hand in his, picking up a little wood dust on her fingertips. That touch led to no talk of a corner of the shop, the days ahead, or marriage. When Lu Ying called from outside to close half the door against the wind, he was in no hurry to let go. He closed it with his other hand.

On the fourteenth, Gu Qing laid her new thread out on half the worktable. Beside it there was still a space left for the old ditch. Her grandmother sat behind the bamboo blind, winding thread around three coarse stems. She put her work away as soon as they were done, as she was going to Sister Ji's shop that afternoon to talk about the lotuses. Gu Qing didn't ask her to stay and help finish a tray of new leaves. She just told her to take an umbrella, and the old woman pointed to the old one behind the door herself and said she knew.

Alone in the courtyard, she tried out the palest gray-green. A spot of color slowly spread in the basin like the little bird on the pomegranate pot in Nanpu when the rain washed it bright. She knew it wasn't the color of a real lotus leaf, and that the flower would gain none of the fragrance that hung over the water. She lifted the cloth, looked at it once against the light, and hung it on the high rack without squeezing in another tray. The tree's shadow fell into the space she'd left clear. Gu Qing sat down and waited for this piece to dry first.