Free The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen Page A

tauntingly as Xifeng had a few moments before. “But, no, you wanted to seem like the perfect daughter-in-law, Lady Jia’s favorite, whom no one can criticize—”
    She slaps Ping’er.

9
    “Baochai, good news,” Mrs. Xue cries, when Baochai walks into her apartment after breakfast. “Zheng just told me that Pan’s case is settled!”
    “Settled? What happened?”
    “All the witnesses said Zhang Hua struck the first blow, so Pan was justified in defending himself. And the doctor said Zhang had suffered from a chronic heart condition, which may have caused his death rather than the beating. So the magistrate decided there was insufficient evidence, and dropped the charges.”
    “That’s wonderful!” Baochai says. Underneath the first flood of relief, she is aware of a feeling of disappointment. Is that it? Pan had killed someone. Could he actually escape scot-free? She tries to suppress the feeling, shocked at herself.
    “Yes, and all thanks to Zheng,” Mrs. Xue says. “We can never be sufficiently grateful to him.”
    She is tired, tired of living in the shadow of Pan’s endless crises and alarms. Surely her mother is, too. “Mother,” she says abruptly.
    “Yes?”
    “Does it ever occur to you that when other people help Pan get out of these messes, he never faces the consequences of what he does?”
    “Why, what do you mean?”
    “Maybe if he really believed that he would go to jail, he wouldn’t have beaten Zhang Hua up.”
    “For shame, Baochai. Do you actually want to see your brother punished? To see him suffer?”
    Abashed by her mother’s shocked expression, Baochai wishes that she had not spoken.
    In silence, Mrs. Xue settles herself on the kang and takes up her sewing. Baochai notices that she is mending one of Pan’s jackets. Baochai slowly gets her workbasket and begins sewing as well.
    “I don’t think you understand, Baochai,” her mother says at last. “A person’s nature is inborn. Even when Pan was a baby, he was always in trouble. As soon as he could crawl, he would pull down everything: books, furniture, tablecloths. Once a pot of hot tea tipped on him andhe got horribly scalded—that was how he got that scar on his arm. I thought, finally he would learn his lesson. But as soon as he got better, he kept doing the same thing.
    “Then, when he was older, your father would beat him for bullying, or not doing his homework. Pan would cry and promise to reform, but even before the welts healed, he would be back to his old tricks.” Mrs. Xue laughs a little, and Baochai is surprised by the tenderness on her face. “After your father died, I didn’t have the heart to beat him myself. Besides, I knew it wouldn’t be of any use.”
    She seems to notice Baochai’s disapproving expression. She smiles, and reaches for Baochai’s hand. “It was just the same with you. Even as a baby, you were just as you are now. I’d never seen or imagined a baby who cried so little. Nothing ever bothered you.
    “And then, when you were older, you picked up everything so quickly: sewing, weaving, housework. Your father taught you to read and write, just for fun, and you could read whole passages of the Three-Word Classic by the time you were four. How proud and happy your father was!” Mrs. Xue smiles reminiscently. “Pan was already eight or nine, and was still struggling to write his name. Your father and I used to joke about it: how we had one child who would never give us a moment’s peace, and another who would never give us a moment’s trouble.”
    Her mother squeezes her hand fondly, and Baochai forces herself to squeeze back. She feels oppressed by the weight of being the perfect daughter. She is almost nineteen, and cannot help but wonder how her own prospects will be affected by Pan’s troubles.
    “I’ve been thinking about what to do about Pan,” she says. “It isn’t good for him to be kicking his heels around the Capital with nothing to do. He’ll just get into more