Free A Different Sky by Meira Chand Page B

stared grimly at the unbound feet of her slave girls.
    â€˜How lucky you modern girls are; no need to bind your feet. In my day a man looked only at your feet. If you had a tiny foot and an ugly face you could make a better marriage than if you had a big foot and a beautiful face. Nowadays, men judge beauty only from a face. Everyone has gone mad.’ She spoke through clenched teeth and then roared at Ah Siew.
    â€˜ Aiiyah, don’t tear at the bindings like that.’
    The bandages criss-crossed Grandmother’s feet in a figure of eight, pulling her heel towards her toes, pushing up the arch, which had finally snapped allowing both ends of a foot to meet. Mei Lan took a deep breath and held it for, as the bandages were unwound, an unbearable stench was released. Ah Siew unravelled the bindings, until the tiny hoof-like protuberances that were Grandmother’s feet were at last revealed. Second Grandmother was now breathing hard for the pain of release seemed almost to equal the pain of confinement.
    â€˜My feet were bound at the age of five. Aiiyah , I remember it still. Nowadays Government has stopped foot binding, but I have heard there are men who still want women with lotus feet,’ Second Grandmother announced, proudly surveying the crushed stumps as the final bandage was removed.
    â€˜Didn’t your mother know how much it hurt you?’ Mei Lan asked. She could not imagine her own mother putting her through such torture.
    â€˜My mother was far away, but had she been there she too would have done what every mother did for a daughter to find a good husband.’ Second Grandmother’s silk trousers were pushed up high and she scratched her bare knee with a long painted nail. The soft calves of her legs were wasted, but her thighs were muscular beneath the silk from the peculiar gait she was forced to adopt to walk on her tiny feet.
    â€˜The Master married me for my feet. Feet as small as mine can drive a man crazy. Look at my beautiful little red dumplings, my golden lilies, my lotus buds.’ Second Grandmother stuck out her legs and crooned to her mangled feet.
    â€˜If your mother was so far away, who bound your feet and took care of you?’ Mei Lan insisted.
    â€˜Oh, an aunty.’ Second Grandmother always swept aside questions about her family. She had no stories to tell of her village in China like Ah Siew, and never mentioned brothers or sisters. Everyone, even Gold and Silver and Little Sparrow, had memories of a former life to root them in the world. Only Second Grandmother’s past appeared hermetically sealed. It was as if she had sprung from nowhere into marriage with Lim Hock An. The only thing that Mei Lan knew was that, before she became Second Grandmother, her name had been Lustrous Pearl.
    â€˜Why an aunty? Was your mother dead? Did you live in the aunty’s house, in the aunty’s village?’ Mei Lan was full of questions.
    â€˜Ssh, Little Goose. Learn some manners, it is rude to question an elder,’ Ah Siew said, turning sternly upon Mei Lan.
    â€˜Where did you meet Grandfather?’ Mei Lan ignored the amah ’s admonishment and tried another line of attack.
    â€˜I was just fourteen when the Master saw me. He said he had never seen feet like my little lotuses. Once he drank wine from my shoe.’ Second Grandmother smiled a secret smile as Ah Siew steered her ‘red dumplings’ into the bowl of scented water, then sighed in relief as the amah massaged almond oil into her callused skin and the crevice between heel and toes.
    â€˜You married Grandfather when you were fourteen?’ Mei Lan asked, wondering how anyone could drink wine from a shoe, let alone a shoe that held such a stinking mutilated foot.
    â€˜The Master preferred me above all the others,’ Second Grandmother replied softly.
    â€˜What others?’ Mei Lan frowned, petulant with frustration. ‘If you were fourteen then you were younger than