Make Another Stem

On the fifteenth day of the sixth month, the first lotus petal opened between Gu Qing's fingers. It was the color of moonlit water, with no red in it, just a touch of pale apricot at the tip and two folds along the edge that hadn't been pressed all the way down. Shen Su took a look and said it was too pale. Gu Qing moved it into the light and then back into the shade. The flower they'd seen from the boat changed whenever the light shifted, she said. This was how it looked when the light moved away.

Grandmother thought for a moment and let her own gray lotus go unmentioned. She held a ball of coarse thread up to the center and, finding Gu Qing had left too much space, added a little with a fingertip. The flower immediately looked fuller. They both looked again, and in the end Gu Qing took half of it out. Shen Su muttered that she was forever taking things apart, but smiled as she wound the removed thread back onto the little spool and kept working even though Gu Qing had gone her own way.

Xiaoman came in the afternoon with two hat brims to see if they could use just a curve of lotus leaf. Gu Qing spread out a whole leaf, and Xiaoman folded the side inward. At once it looked like a little gust of wind that had just turned up. Gu Qing liked the fold and wanted to keep her own lotus petal whole. They each made one, then laid the finished pieces side by side. Xiaoman chose hers, and Gu Qing chose her own. All their time working together had still left them with two distinct pairs of hands.

They asked Shen Su to choose, and what took her eye was the gray-green bundle they had pulled apart, the one that had never become a flower. It would look good on the side of her hat, she said. Gu Qing laughed aloud and asked why, when they had seriously asked for her opinion, she wouldn't play along. Her grandmother said she was old enough now to look only at what she liked. She really did take the bundle, loop thread around it twice, and pin it on. It looked like neither a flower nor a leaf. The three of them stood around the bronze mirror for some time. Xiaoman said it looked like a bean still in its pod. The old woman said beans were fine. Beans meant something to eat.

Gu Qing showed the finished lotus to a fan maker. The customer wanted something for summer fans and thought the flower was too large. Instead the customer chose Xiaoman's simple curved leaf and asked whether she could make two pairs. Gu Qing passed on the request without arguing that her own flower had taken more work and ought to be chosen first. After the customer left, she still felt a little dissatisfied. She turned the flower over and over before finally setting it in a shallow dish by her window and admitting that, at least for now, she was the one who most wanted to keep it.

She and Xiaoman no longer worked together every day. Xiaoman had hours at the hat shop, and Gu Qing had days for the flower shop and walk-in customers. They wrote down the time they spent on samples together and did the rest separately. They still argued over a fastening sometimes, and once when Gu Qing forgot to give the measurements, she paid for the piece to be done over herself. Shen Su no longer had to cook for three every day. If Xiaoman happened to be there at mealtime, they put out another bowl. If she wasn't, Gu Qing didn't ask why she hadn't stayed to eat.

The heat lay heavy in the seventh month. The drain under the plum leaves still needed checking, and insects had taken bites out of another small patch of leaves. Qiu Shen came by and took his usual payment for looking after the tree. The display rack had been taken down in the Wen family's courtyard, and the space was used to hold empty boxes for a while, keeping the roots and the waterway clear. Looking across from the well, Gu Qing sometimes saw Madam Meng delivering a new color, and sometimes saw only Achun passing with an empty basket. She no longer weighed other people's trays of goods in her own heart every time.

The umbrella shop on South Street was busier than she'd imagined. When she went over to sit, customers often kept her outside the door, and Zhou Jiping couldn't always put down his work to keep her company. Once she got tired of waiting and turned to go. He came after her and said the little stool was still inside. She looked and saw it piled high with new umbrella paper. They laughed at the same time. He cleared a corner, and she sat down to sew her own cuff. She did no unpaid work for him that afternoon and made no demand that he close early just because she'd had to wait.

He came to her house later to see the summer shade. Shen Su made a point of bringing out the beanlike lump of gray-green silk and asking whether one could be tied to the tip of an umbrella too. Zhou Jiping said it could and asked first what sort of bean she had in mind. His solemnity left the old woman speechless, and Gu Qing laughed so hard that the scissors shook in her hand. He took them from her, set them somewhere out of the way, and waited until she'd finished laughing before handing them back. They made no promises about all the summers to come on the strength of that small closeness. Their hands already knew how to make room for each other at a narrow table.

Life did not grow easy simply because they'd made that journey. Two long spells of rain in autumn meant fewer ordinary flowers sold. Gu Qing dipped into her reserves a little and put it back by the end of the month. Her grandmother still couldn't see a fine needle clearly, and her knee ached worse when it was cold. They no longer pinned their next outing on a good year that was sure to come. They talked about nearby places they'd like to see, and when her feet and the weather were both willing, they'd go a little way.

On the twenty-sixth of the eleventh month that same year, the plum bloomed again. The blossoms were scattered across the tree. The branch near the warehouse had fewer, while the slender tip visible outside the window was thick with them. Gu Qing carried water early that morning and stood by the well to make out the color of this year’s blooms, her fingertips still sticky with the thin paste from wrapping stems the night before. A year had passed over the curve in the wall, and a little green was growing in the mortar joints. The trunk was still in the same place, though someone had been a long way from home.

She went inside for fresh silk. The first old plum spray poked out at an angle from its paper compartment in the corner of the window. The petal tips had yellowed, the dusting of powder had faded to almost nothing, and the thread around the stem was what she’d wound tight just before leaving. She reached out and brushed off the dust without adding any more powder. Beside it, the Moonwater lotus she’d made in summer was a little dusty too. Shen Su’s gray lotus was in a separate box. She had no wish to set the three old flowers out as though they were the only three things she’d got right all year. She simply couldn’t bear to throw any of them away.

Grandmother was already up, sitting by the bamboo blind with her knee warmers on. She asked if Gu Qing was going to make another white plum spray and said there was red fabric from a few years back in the cupboard. Gu Qing said she'd make today's branch first and try the red next time. She looked from several places by the window before it struck her how big the buds on the spray she'd made early in the eleventh lunar month had been, as though they all wanted to bloom at once. On the real branch before her, some clustered and some stood apart, refusing to crowd together according to her rules.

She took away three buds and left a gap. This was the tree before her, meeting the winds of this particular year, in a shape of its own, apart from Xiaoman’s lopsided pattern and Shen Su’s old curled edges. She worked slowly, checking it in the light and then in the shade, setting the newly colored thin petals out to dry before asking them to stand up. Grandmother wound thread around two stems, put them away when her hands grew cold, and went to the Chens’ to hear whose cat had scrambled onto the awning last night. She left without asking when lunch would be ready.

Gu Qing was home alone when a customer came in the afternoon. It was the very person who'd asked about scent in the West Market the year before. The customer might not have remembered her and said only that someone here made silk flowers, and that they wanted two sprays by a north-facing window to give it a little more brightness in winter. Gu Qing showed the customer the old plum spray and explained that this was the color after a year. New ones would be brighter and would fade in time too. The customer leaned in and sniffed, then asked if there was really no fragrance at all.

She said they had no fragrance. If he wanted scent, he could set out a sachet separately, where it wouldn't press on the silk. She let the answer stand without leading him to the tree to have its fragrance vouch for her flowers. The man said that suited him, as someone at home coughed at strong scents. The shape of the old plum blossom would do, and the buds needn't all be so full. Gu Qing took out a slip of paper and wrote down two stems at eighteen wen apiece, to be ready in three days. She left the stem that was still drying where it was.

After the customer left, she took the water over to the well and only then caught a trace of plum fragrance. It came and went, fading whenever the wind shifted, too faint to fill a room. She stood there watching a petal fall onto the wet stone, remembering the scissors she had once raised halfway into the air by moonlight. Now they lay at her hand for cutting thread. When Grandmother came back with a small packet of sour plums, she saw Gu Qing standing there and didn’t hurry her back to work. She reached out and took the water herself.

At dusk Zhou Jiping brought back the wooden clamps he had borrowed, with no other gift. Gu Qing called him to the window to look at the ones she had made this year. He looked at the old spray first, recognized the ring of thread she had added later, and said the old one still stood up well. She said if it could stand, it could stay. She wasn't going to dress it up to look young. He laughed and reached to straighten a crooked petal. She tapped his hand away and told him to wash first. There was still oil on his fingers.

He went to the well to wash his hands. Grandmother was drawing water there, and whatever passed between them made them both laugh. Through the window Gu Qing could see her half of the table, the basin she had washed so many times, and a length of plum branch beyond the curved wall. Suddenly she felt no need to call the whole year good. She tucked the last thread beneath the base of the new spray, leaving it loose enough that it would not bite, and set the spray in its paper compartment to check again tomorrow.

Shen Su brought in the water and asked whether they'd go to see the lotus again next year. Gu Qing looked up, and the old woman laughed first. They needn't go so far again, she said. They could see whether any had been planted over at Luwan, and if walking was too much, they could just ride out to look at the water. Gu Qing said they'd ask around when spring came, leaving it at that. Her grandmother sat down, picked out a sour plum for her, and took her time sucking on the one she kept.

The window was not fully shut. In the courtyard, Zhou Jiping shook the water from his hands, then came in to lower the tall stand a little for her. The first old silk plum blossom remained in the corner of the window; the new sprig rested quietly in its paper compartment. Wind passed through the real plum trees above the wall and brushed Gu Qing's fingers. She lowered her head and tucked the loose thread away again, leaving the window open.