Free The Painter of Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein

sight; Godmother doesn’t want her virgins ‘mingling’ or running off. So the man follows Yuliang everywhere, even on outhouse trips. He stands guard while she sits, hotly shamed, trying vainly to pass water without splashing.
    Despite such humiliations, however, such nights feel like tiny escapes. Sometimes Yuliang even imagines slipping away unnoticed, off the man’s shoulders, away from the room. Cloakless, breathless, racing down the street despite her bound feet. Perhaps someone would help her. Or perhaps she’d just slip onto a houseboat docked by the shore. On the long journey down the gloomy, cowshit-brown river, she could show herself to the boat’s owners. They would be a real, proper family. A real mother, not a Godmother. A real father, not an uncle. Maybe even a little baby; Yuliang would love to play with a baby! She would appear like a genie to embroider tiny clothes and caps. She’d cook southern specialties she would magicallyhave mastered: fish-head casserole, clay-pot rice. She’d win the surprised family right over. You’ve made our lives so much better, the mother would say. Please come home with us. Become our eldest daughter.
    And Yuliang would. She’d sleep with the baby and the mother like a kitten in a snug litter. Safe from men. Blissful in the knowledge that the next day would start at six in the morning, and not six at night.
    Six at night is when Hall life starts in earnest. In Jinling’s room Yuliang lines up her mentor’s accessories and appliances. She helps Jinling with her toilette, bringing water, mixing makeup. She now knows how to clean a downy upper lip with a taut piece of thread. She can redraw Jinling’s eyebrows with a charcoal pencil; can give her elegant spider legs or flying arches like bird wings. It makes her feel oddly powerful to be able to make such choices.
    After makeup, she also helps choose Jinling’s first outfit of the night. Jinling is the only girl in the Hall who changes for each of her guests. The maids complain that it makes extra work, and Xiaochen mutters that it’s ‘uppity.’ But Jinling always makes sure to tip the maids a little extra. And no one pays attention to anything Xiaochen says these days. ‘Listen, Yuliang,’ Jinling instructs. ‘A fresh dress makes a guest feel special, welcomed. It makes him feel like he’s your first customer of the evening.’
    Yuliang tucks this advice away along with Godmother’s promise of her own new wardrobe: six new dresses once her calyx has been opened. For now, she focuses on the colors and textures of Jinling’s trousseau. She learnsthe characters embossed on jackets and scarves, and matches them up in what she imagines must be auspicious combinations: Luck and happiness. Happiness and good fortune. Good fortune with wealth with wisdom. She thinks of new ways to pair tones: the sea greens, sky blues, the starry silvers. At first Jinling eyes some of these choices dubiously. ‘I’ve never worn that dress with that shawl,’ she’ll say, and send out for a second opinion. But as the months pass and the opinions concur, the top girl stops her questioning. She even tells Godmother that Yuliang’s eye is becoming refined. ‘She’ll be good, this one,’ she says. And gives Yuliang’s knee a soft squeeze beneath the table.
    By seven the manservant is announcing arrivals, using the Hall’s own special code. A guest has arrived means someone unknown, since return guests are always announced by name. If the guest has a preferred girl, her name is announced too. Jinling, Yi Gan has honored you with a visit. He requests that you prepare him some tea.
    By ten, the Hall is filled with smoke and liquored chatter. Voices rise in counting for the finger-game. Yuliang and Suyin ferry plates back and forth from the kitchen: the plump bodies of crabs doused with black beans and chili, shiny red pork and potatoes, bowls and more bowls of steaming rice. The girls weave around the gambling tables to the slick