The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai

Author:Pai Kit Fai
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Women, Women - China - Social conditions, General, Sagas, China, Historical, Social conditions, Fiction, China - Social life and customs, Women
ISBN: 9780312355210
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-09-29T05:08:52.316804+00:00

CHAPTER 17

The Ginger Field

Chinese New Year was little more than a week away. As the household staff prepared for their annual holiday, Li decided that the time had come to approach Ah-Ho. She did not want to begin another year with such an impossible situation, which was not only causing the Fish to sometimes take to her bed, but fraying her own nerves. As there seemed no hope that the head amah would come bearing a peace offering, Li would go to her.

Steeling her resolve, Li entered the kitchen to ask for peppermint tea to ease her nausea. Ah-Ho appeared instantly at the sound of her voice. Grim-faced, she neither looked at nor spoke to Li, but addressed the most ju nior kitchen maid “Where is old dog bones, that her illustrious mistress should soil her silken slippers on the floor of this humble kitchen?” Suddenly, as surely as pointing a blade, she stared directly at Li. “Tell old dog bones to fetch her tea.”

Li heard tittering from the scullery and saw the cook smirking over her stove. The mooi-jai stood frozen, looking from one to the other. Li stared back at Ah-Ho, wanting to challenge her but acutely conscious that to do so would end badly. “The old one is resting. Please have hot peppermint tea sent to my sitting room.”

Ah-Ho let seconds tick by before answering, “I do not believe we have peppermint. I shall send the mooi-jai to buy some. It may take some time.”

“Then I shall have raspberry,” Li replied instantly.

Ah-Ho put a finger to her lips in an insolent manner. “Let me see.” She shook her head in mock regret. “I am sorry. Raspberry is never used in this house.”

“Very well, I shall have ginger tea. Surely you have ginger in your storeroom. If you do not, I shall have to ask your master to review the ordering of such simple supplies.” Li turned and left the kitchen without another word.

When the tea arrived an hour later, it was stone cold. Li lifted the lid from the cup to find a large cockroach floating beneath it, heavy with the pod of its eggs. Li saw it as the test she had always known would come, a reminder of who she really was. Even Ben’s care, love, and protection, even carrying his child, could not change the truth: She was a farm girl of no breeding who had been denounced as a fiend by her own people. In daring to rise above her station, she had committed the unforgivable sin of challenging and offending those around her.

The pregnant cockroach, dead in her cup, said all of this. As she stared at it, the fear and humiliation that had followed her for so long froze to an icy core that left no room for hesitation. She returned to the kitchen. Ah-Ho was seated at her special table with the cracked marble top, a jar of green tea halfway to her lips.

“There is a cockroach in my tea.

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