Free The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo Page A

half my vital energy. For that he prescribed a
course of heating foods. Ginseng, wine, longan, and ginger. On the third day
when I had recovered enough to sit up in bed, Amah brought me a bowl of chicken
soup laced with sesame oil to strengthen the heart and nerves. In the morning
light she looked shriveled, as though a puff of wind would blow her away.
    I gave her the ghost of a smile. “I’m all right,
Amah.”
    “I don’t know what happened to you. The doctor
thought it was brain fever. Your father blames himself.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He was at your bedside the past few days. I made
him rest. There’s no sense everyone in the household getting sick.”
    I sipped the scalding soup. Amah had an arsenal of
brews in her battery, but she said we would start with chicken soup as I was so
weak. Later I should have ginseng.
    “That’s expensive,” I said.
    “What’s the point of saving when things have got
this far? Don’t worry about the money.”
    She made an angry face and turned away. I was too
tired to argue with her. The doctor came again and prescribed a course of
moxibustion and more herbs to warm my blood. He seemed pleasantly surprised at
my progress but I knew the real reason. During the past week I had had no
dreams.
    I had no illusions about this state of affairs,
however. If it was madness, the situation seemed hopeless. But if the spirit of
Lim Tian Ching was really haunting me, there might be something I could do about
it. Presumably I had to consent to the marriage, judging from his insistence on
a ceremony. But his wild talk about border officials, whomever they were, and
his assertion that he had a right to me was disturbing, even terrifying. I
wished I still had Tian Bai’s pocket watch. When I had flung it, it had fallen
behind the heavy almirah , or cupboard; and while I
was so weak in bed, there were no means to move the furniture and retrieve it. I
asked Amah to find it for me but she refused. She had been set against the gift
of a clock as bad luck in any event, and I quickly realized it was better not to
mention it again in case she decided to get rid of it for me.
    A few days later, there was a commotion in the
house. Noises floated up—people talking and doors banging in the courtyard
below. I came out of my room and asked our maid, Ah Chun. Besides Amah, she and
the cook, Old Wong, were the only servants in our large and empty house.
    “Oh, miss!” she said. “Your father has a
visitor.”
    My father occasionally had visitors, but they were
old friends; mild, retiring people like himself who came and went with little
ceremony.
    “Who is it?” I asked.
    “It’s a handsome young man!”
    This was clearly the most exciting event that had
happened in a long time; and I could imagine that Ah Chun would be pressed
against the courtyard wall gossiping with next door’s maid before nightfall. But
my heart was pounding. The hope that rose in my throat almost choked me.
    I made my way slowly down the stairs. The front
stairs in our house were finely carved of chengal wood in my grandfather’s time. Visitors always exclaimed over the exquisite
handiwork, but for some reason neither Amah nor Old Wong liked the staircase.
They would never say why but preferred to come and go by the cramped back
stairway. When I reached the bottom, Amah found me.
    “What are you doing?” she cried, shaking her dust
cloth at me. “Go back to your room at once!”
    “Who is it, Amah?”
    “I don’t know, but don’t stand here. You’ll catch a
chill.”
    Never mind that it was a warm afternoon. Amah was
always darkly muttering about drafts and cooling elements. I started back up the
stairs slowly when my father’s study door opened and Tian Bai came out. He stood
in the courtyard taking leave of my father while I clung to the railing. I
wished I didn’t look so disheveled, yet hoped desperately that he would see me.
As I hesitated over the impropriety of calling his name, he exchanged a few