Go Ask the River. Evelyn Eaton
brush and scroll and sat down expectantly, her brothers, especially Elder Brother, protested hotly. She was a girl. She had no business there. Honorable Tutor must turn her out at once. But Honorable Tutor was amused, or else he had an inkling of what her father would say.
“Let the small dragon stay,” her father said. “She will tire of it soon enough.”
When she proved him wrong, he shrugged, as her brothers had to learn to shrug, and she was allowed to practice script and master characters according to p’ai-lü, so long as she kept quiet, in the background where she belonged, and so long as she was properly admiring of her brothers’ brushwork and did not put forward her own.
When the day came to advance to a study of the even and uneven tones of the five-character lines of the classics, there was another protest and a much stronger one. This time Elder Brother had a sharper weapon against her. This time she had made a great mistake. She had shown her first completed poem to Honorable Tutor, and he had read it aloud, pointing out the beauty of the brushwork and the sound composition of the form. It was called “Now Alighted.”
Now alighted on the shadowy pooltwo birds float together on the green water. They rest as one, they move as one, they cannot be parted, whose hearts and minds and bodies know only each other, who have never had a dissenting thought. Even the leaves and the rushescling together, bending above them. Happy birds! Happy birds!
Elder Brother was beside himself. “It is indelicate,” he said. “Why should she write of love? How should she know of love? I am contracted in marriage, and I…and I…”
Hung Tu smiled up at him. “You have been trying to write a poem of love now for a week. You are angry because my brushwork is commended. Shall I lend you my poem, Elder Brother, to send to your betrothed?”
At that he snatched the scroll from the tutor and ran to his father, and Hung Tu trembled, knowing she had gone too far.
When she was sent for, she arrived with downcast eyes and hands in her long sleeves and stood demurely before her father, while Elder Brother sputtered and scolded at his side, and—she could tell this from his feet, tapping beneath the robe—bored him with this vehemence.
Nevertheless, “Eighteen gifted daughters do not equal one lame son,” he told her sternly. “A due respect for your brothers is more pleasing than good brushwork.” He gave her back the scroll.
To his sons he said, “Teach the parrot to talk, some will do it well. Teach the girl to write, some will do it well. What then? What is changed? It is still a bird, it is still a girl.” He shrugged.
To Honorable Tutor he said, “Correct me if I quote the Master with inaccuracy. Did he not once say: ‘Women are indeed human beings, but they are of a lower state than men. They can never attain to full equality with men. The aim of feminine education therefore is perfect submission, not the cultivation and development of the mind.’” After a pause he added, “It has never been proved that women have a mind…nor disproved.” Then to his sons, “Let the small dragon live. It has no wings. What if it try to sing? It is not heard.”
He dismissed them. Elder Brother bowed and left the pavilion. Second Brother lingered sulkily.
“My father, when the time comes for me to part the curtains, do not choose for me a wife who can read.”
“It shall be remembered. Yet, my second son, a well-informed mind to share the pillow can be a source of strength and of comfort to a man.”
There was an awkward silence while they all remembered that his own wives could not read.
And to Hung Tu, waiting in the doorway for her betters to depart, he said unexpectedly, “Give me the scroll.”
Later she discovered from some gossip of the maids he had shown it to his friends, boasting of his daughter’s talent, and they had drunk toasts to her.
She was at the well when she heard it, with her mother’s pitcher to be filled. It was early in the morning, when the latest news went round, while the creaking buckets were hauled up on their ropes and the jostling servants waited, laughing together, relaxed and fresh for the day, the lord and the ladies of the house still safe in bed.
Sometimes they forgot that she was there and she heard things not intended for her, but this they wanted her to hear; they were pleased and proud of this small triumph, reflecting credit on the House of Hsueh.
She managed to smile demurely and to look on the ground as she should, and to make little gestures of polite deprecation to show how well she was trained, but her heart was thumping wildly and she needed all her strength to hold the pitcher steady and to watch it being filled and then to carry it away on her shoulder as though this water for the Second Lady was all she was thinking of, instead of her father’s approval of her poem and the knowledge flooding her that she was a great poet, the greatest poet in the Empire probably.
V
HUNG TU’S MOTHER was the Second Lady of the House of Hsueh. She had come from a great merchant’s house in Changan, where she was only a concubine, as the First Lady often pointed out. Worse, she bore her husband nothing but a slave, a girl. His sons were First Lady’s.
These unkind public reflections wounded Hung Tu deeply, more than they seemed to hurt her mother, who sat serenely through them, gently acquiescing in anything that Elder Sister chose to say.
When, as a child, Hung Tu was stung to bursts of weeping, disgracing them both, Second Lady would take her quietly away to their own pavilion. She never scolded. She never encouraged rebellion or admitted that Elder Sister was unkind. But once, when Hung Tu in a passion of helpless fury shouted, “I hate her! I hate her!” Second Lady said, “Then do as I do, never give her the satisfaction of your tears.”
After that Hung Tu grew more cunning and more observant. One thing she observed, and saw others observing while they pretended to be blind. This was that her father’s sleeping mat was spread more often in Second Lady’s pavilion than in Elder Sister’s. Second Lady was gentle, she was pretty, her mind upon the pillow must have been satisfactory, a source of strength and comfort to her husband, although she had never learned script. When Hsueh Yun emerged from Second Lady’s door he was always smiling and content. People could ask him favors then, or tell him disquieting news. When his mat was spread in Elder Sister’s pavilion it was better to efface oneself that day, at least until the noon.
These reflections helped Hung Tu to endure the nagging of Elder Sister, the indifference of her brothers, and the rudeness of them all to her mother. Second Lady lived in as much seclusion as Elder Sister would permit, and in this way the daily life went on, with undercurrents of victory this side or that, beneath a surface of decorum.
Second Lady’s small name was Harmonizing Reed. It suited her essence. She could play several instruments—the harp, the lute, the guitar. Her voice was like silver raindrops. She had a prodigious memory for hundreds of songs. Long before Honorable Tutor introduced Hung Tu to the classics, she already knew the words of many by heart, from her mother’s songs. This was an advantage her brothers did not have, and one reason why she outstripped them at their lessons. As long as she could remember, Second Lady sang her to sleep with a different song each night. Sometimes her father came to listen. Then Second Lady played and sang for him alone, and Hung Tu was quite forgotten.
This was the union between them, the single mind, the undivided part, the heart the leaves attested of her poem. To their harmonious union she owed her existence and the indulgence with which she was treated in the House of Hsueh although she was a girl.
When she discussed this puzzling question, the misfortune of being born a girl, a disgrace to Hsueh Yun and Second Lady, and what she had done to be so evil, Second Lady paid serious attention, as though the words in her mouth were important. This was soothing to Hung Tu, wilting over what her brothers often said.
“If they were not so unkind, I would like being a girl.”
Second