Free The Courtesan by Alexandra Curry Page A

to bind a girl’s feet, and because Lao Mama cannot get a cheaper price from her or anyone. And so Lao Mama hates her and she always has and always will, and this is the way that Lao Mama turns her face to the world.
    Sticks of wood hiss and crackle, and the boys are prodding the fire as though their lives depend on the heat of the embers, and they don’t know where Cook has put the bellows. They keep their eyes on the bamboo rod and look relieved when Lao Mama turns her attention to the child. She is holding a pair of bound-foot shoes in her hand, and she brings them close to the child’s face and lets them dangle in front of her eyes. Suyin knows how this feels, to be taunted like this.
    The child’s mouth is open. The shoes are dark blue, and they look impossibly tiny even for someone as small as she is.
    â€œLight my pipe,” Lao Mama says to one of the boys without looking at either of them. Both boys jump as though her voice were an axe falling far too close to where they are standing.
    â€œThere was a little girl who would run upon the street. She stole some rice and traded it for something good to eat.” Lao Mama is leering at the child, still holding the shoes, waggling them there right at her face. She finishes the rhyme. “Her mother lost control of her until she bound her feet. And now she’s just as good a girl as you will ever meet.”
    The last bit Lao Mama says slowly, and the shoes stop moving, and the child’s eyes are round with worry. Suyin worries for her and for the houseboys and for Cook as well, and she doesn’t want these worries in her heart and in her head—
because she has enough worries of her own, and it is so very painful to worry and to love and notbe loved in return.
One houseboy stands there, Lao Mama’s pipe in hand, waiting, unsure what to do. Suyin nods at him. A silent way of telling him,
It is better if you do nothing.
    â€œOne of my favorite rhymes,” Lao Mama says now. “Do you know it?”
    The child shakes her head—no, she doesn’t know the rhyme. The boy nods, as though to say,
I know, I know.
    â€œ
Hè,
what is the matter with you? It is a child’s rhyme, and nothing more,” Lao Mama says. The child looks close to tears.
    She is pitiless,
Suyin is thinking,
and as cruel as poison.
She herself is weary enough to lie down and never get up.
    â€œYou should be grateful,” Lao Mama says. “Don’t you want to be beautiful?” She lifts the dark blue shoes high above the child’s head and drops them one at a time onto the floor next to the stool. As though she were dropping feathers or leaves or bits of confetti. But the shoes are heavier than those things are, and the sound of them slapping the floor startles everyone in the room. And then, suddenly, Lao Mama swoops down to snatch the tiger shoes from the child’s lap.
    She’s caught the girl unawares. Her hands fly up, but Lao Mama is too quick for her.
    â€œYou won’t need these anymore,” she says. “Soon you will have tiny
san zun jin lian
for feet—three-inch golden lilies—just like mine. Then you can wear other, smaller shoes that make your feet look beautiful—for the turtle heads who are my customers.”
    In an instant Suyin knows what is coming, but the shriek stops in her throat, and before her feet can move a single step one tiger shoe is on the fire; flames surge, and the stink of burning felt and silk and embroidery thread fills the air. The child has leapt to her feet. She is clawing at Lao Mama’s gown, reaching for the second shoe, and screaming, “No.” Lao Mama holds the shoe up high andpushes her aside, and the stool topples, crashing to the floor. And now both shoes are burning on the fire; the child is reaching with her hands toward the flames, and Lao Mama is shrieking. “What is she doing? She will ruin herself. Someone stop her. Make her stop.”
    Suyin