Free The Courtesan by Alexandra Curry Page B

lunges. She grabs a small shoulder, an arm, a hank of hair. She wraps her arms around the child, and the child struggles and then goes limp. Suyin murmurs her name, and it is the first time she has said it aloud. “Jinhua,” she says.
“Mei banfa.”
We can do nothing. “Now that you have come here, you do not own yourself.” It takes a huge effort to keep her voice soft and calm.
    Jinhua is sobbing now in her arms, and Suyin is wondering,
How can it be that something so necessary can be gone so quickly, leaving not a trace behind?
For this she has no answer—and she is remembering the burning of everything she had when she first came here to the Hall of Round Moon and how the child said only yesterday, “I can love you, Suyin, even though you are ugly.” When she looks up she finds Lao Mama’s eyes on her, and she has seen this look before.
When others give comfort, she finds ways to be cruel. When others love, she hates.
This, too, is Lao Mama’s way of turning her face to the world. The houseboys look stricken. Suyin unfolds her arms from Jinhua’s body. She sees the houseboys squirm. Lao Mama hesitates; Suyin can see her thinking, deciding, her eyes bearing down.
She has not finished for today.
Lao Mama pulls the little dog from her sleeve—he is tiny in her hand—and now she is holding him at arm’s length by the scruff of his neck. Lao Mama loves Xiaoyun and talks to him and feeds him bits of shrimp from her fingertips at mealtimes, but now Xiaoyun is dangling in midair in just the way the shoes dangled—much too close to the fire.
    Lao Mama won’t do this, surely she won’t.
All is still in the room except for the spitting, crackling fire. Jinhua has stopped her crying and is watching the sweet little dog. Everyone is watching. LaoMama shakes Xiaoyun once and then again, and he squeals, and his little voice can barely be heard even in this quiet place.
    â€œTake him, Suyin. He is yours. I am sick to death of the little beast. Get him out of my sight before he, too, lands in the fire. Throw him out into the street; sell him; wring his little neck. It is nothing to me what you do with him.”
    From beyond the kitchen walls that are blackened with soot and grease comes the voice of the night watchman on an early morning round in the street. A tomcat yowls, and a woman lets loose a string of the foulest words Suyin has ever heard in all her life. She receives the dog with two hands cupped, and his rosebud tongue appears, and the brew in the basin has reached a blistering boil.
    â€œYou don’t mean it,” she whispers, and she is terrified.
    Lao Mama shrieks back in reply, her eyes glittering. “Of course I do. I mean every single word that I say, just as I always do.”
    Suyin feels the girl’s eyes on her back as she turns. “I will put Xiaoyun somewhere safe,” she says, “so that you can decide later, Lao Mama, what to do—when you are not so angry.” The words
when you are not so angry
Suyin says softly, almost silently, under her breath.

    Jinhua
    â€œDid you hear that, Lao Mama? She likes her feet the way they are. I think she wants those stupid red shoes out of the fire.
Hè.
”
    The foot-binding lady is mocking Jinhua, speaking in a little-girl whine that isn’t her voice. She has three fingers pressing down on Jinhua’s ankle, moving from spot to spot to find her pulse, andbright green disks wobble in her ears each time she moves those three fingers. Lao Mama is smoking her smelly pipe, and Jinhua wishes she hadn’t said that about her feet, that she wanted them to stay the same. The words came out of her mouth even though she knows that Lao Mama will not change her mind. The tiger shoes are gone; she knows that, too, and what will happen to the little dog?
Surely Suyin—
    â€œThe girl’s kidney
qi
is surging.” The foot binder is using her normal voice now, and her