Read Online The Courtesan by Alexandra Curry - Free Book Online

Lao Mama’s voice moves to another place that is farther away.
    â€œI am seven years old,” the girl says, and her breath flutters in the dark. “And,” she adds, “I don’t ever want to be eight or nine or ten or eleven.”
    Suyin closes her eyes and nods and feels as sad for the girl as she is for herself. A pause; a breath becomes a sigh.
    â€œLong, long ago in ancient times, just wishing a thing would make it so,” the girl begins her story. “And in those times,” the girl continues, and Lao Mama calls again, and this time it is her angriest, most shrieking voice moving closer. The girl’s voice falters.
    â€œDon’t be afraid,” Suyin says, reaching for the girl’s hand. “Go on with your story.” Her sadness is so large, and the way the story begins is making it even larger. She, too, feels small and frightened, and she, too, wishes for something that cannot ever be. Her fingers make contact with a cold floor, a damp embroidered shoe, a small knee.
    â€œAnd in those times,” the girl goes on, “when someone was dead and when someone else wanted very, very much for the dead person to come back and be home forever and for a long time—”
    A cold breeze strokes the room, and Suyin sees the girl shiver, and she wishes it were Aiwen sitting here with her, telling the story that makes her heart feel like bursting.
    â€œTell me the rest,” she says, and she is desperate just once to hear what can happen when a person wishes and wants—and hopes, but now the little girl is shaking. She has drawn her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
    â€œI cannot finish this story today,” she says. “It is not, after all, a good day for tellingstories.”

8
    WAITING FOR A MOON

    Jinhua
    It is a place where things happen in the night. People come and go and most of them are men, but some are women. Jinhua hears high, singing voices late in the evening, and giggles; the
ding ling
of porcelain and the sound of shoes in the hall outside. She thinks about Baba, but sometimes when she is sleeping under the red, sweet-smelling quilt that used to be Aiwen’s, she forgets that he is dead.
    There are three pale ladybugs lying on the floor in the room where Jinhua sleeps, and they are dead too. No one is sweeping them up or looking after Jinhua, except that sometimes Suyin, who is the maid, comes to bring rice, and sometimes the eyebrow lady comes. Suyin mostly cares about doing her work, and that is all. Sometimes she cries because Aiwen killed herself and she was Suyin’s friend.
    The eyebrow lady says she must be called Lao Mama. Once, when Jinhua didn’t call her that and said out loud that she wanted to go home, Lao Mama grabbed her arm and twisted it behind herback. It was hard not to cry when this happened. She won’t say that again out loud, but Lao Mama can’t stop Jinhua from thinking what she thinks inside her head.
    Who misses me in my garden?
    The fish. The cat.
    The red apricot tree.
    I want to go home.

    â€œSuyin, I have a question.”
    It is a bright, cold morning, and Jinhua is speaking in a small voice because she is not yet sure of Suyin’s mood today. Busy or sad or nice, those are Suyin’s moods, mostly. Breakfast is a bowl of gleaming porridge on a bamboo tray with pork and a preserved duck egg and golden bits of crisp-fried
youtiao
topped with ribbons of scallion.
    Jinhua is hungry. Her mouth is ready to eat.
    â€œWhat is your question?” Suyin’s breath smells of tea, and her eyes are sleepy. She stops what she is doing.
    â€œWhy, Suyin, can’t we leave my feet the size that fits my tiger shoes?”
    Suyin hands Jinhua a porcelain spoon. “Eat,” she says, moving away, making that
tok-
ing noise with her shoes. “But be careful, the porridge is hot.”
    Jinhua hardly thinks about Suyin’s limp anymore, but her mouth and eyes look sad