Small pincer-like hands gripped Dan'er’s shoulders from behind, causing her to duck forward instinctively, nearly spilling the dirty tableware stacked in her straining arms. She managed to guide the heavy food-flecked plates and tea-stained cups into the wash basin before turning around to glower at Sister Lianhua.
The petite maiden stood her same height despite being seven years her senior. Narrow brows curved over dark eyes crinkled in laughter. Smooth black hair coiled into rectangular buns on either side of her head exaggerated youthfulness. They were held together by bright red ribbons–denoting her integrity–and decorated with golden leaf hair pins–signifying her high class. Strands of iridescent pearls dangled from metallic stems like time-captured falling dew, trembling in time with thin, shaking shoulders.
Sister Lianhua’s pale face from the nose down was hidden by one sleeve-draped hand. She wore an elegant silk pifeng of light gray trimmed with white. Dozens of her namesake flower embellished the lower half of the long, flowing robe: lotuses in assorted sizes, angles, and stages of bloom, embroidered in colors of her merits and interests: pink for tongue caresses, orange for finger play, and so on.
“Table one requires utensils,” she reported, after regaining her composure. The weighty words, her lingering company, the fact that it was the sixth day of the week, conveyed the unspoken: Bomen was back.
A moment of elation was quickly consumed by panic. Dan'er peered around the staging corridor even knowing full well she was the only one available. Suppressing a sigh, she wiped hands on her shoulder rag and began to assemble a set of clean crockery when the maiden specified: “Three heads.” Dan'er’s stomach dropped. She tried to steady herself as she balanced the increased pile, following Sister Lianhua out the partition curtains into the fray of the dining floor of Hundred Flowers House.
Nine round rosewood tables commanded the space, two-thirds seated with customers, the rest in the process of being turned over. The brunch crowd, restored to full capacity now that famine restrictions had lifted, queued out carved open doors. An underlying buzz of shouted greetings, high-spirited conversations, dictated orders, eager solicitations, and shrieks of laughter pervaded. Staff scurried back and forth receiving orders, delivering dishes, clearing remains.
Cool spring air passing through gauze-screened lattice windows churned scents of sesame oil, citrus pepper, and cooking wine. In crossing the floor the girls yielded several times to servers barreling through with favorite savories: blanched leafy broccoli coated in oyster sauce and garlic, steamed fish garnished with chopped ginger and spring onion, fried tofu dipped in soy sauce. These were chased by popular sweets: flaky rose pastries, fluffy lotus seed buns, glutinous chrysanthemum and osmanthus cakes.
Abruptly, Sister Lianhua emitted a squeal. Too late, Dan'er spied her latest fond thing seated at table six. The aspiring literati, dressed in second-hand scholar’s robes, looked up with his usual bewildered expression and Sister Lianhua peeled off before Dan'er could protest.
Dan'er made to follow but inadvertently glanced at table one, catching the attention of its other two occupants now revealed: the Wu brothers. The last time Dan'er had met the imperial clerks they had all been freezing their faces off on Distribution Day. They had sat side by side as a trio, bundled in fur-lined jackets against wet winter-cum-spring snow, behind the administration desk set up before the public vault. Townsfolk had gathered in front of them, restless and buzzing, stomping about trying to warm up bodies and cool off heads, impatiently waiting for their weekly grain dole requisitioned from their own hard-reaped harvests.
Dan'er still remembered when the old magistrate stepped up to open the vault with the sole key. The brothers had been reminiscing about capital teahouses with kang benches. Raised seating, they deigned to explain, built on top of complex flue systems that channeled hot exhaust from cooking fires to heat the body and re-energize the soul. Assuredly ingenious engineering which the country peasants of her provincial town could not even conceive.
Suddenly a shout and a giant cloud swelled behind them. Dan'er leapt out of her chair, turned to find the magistrate and entire vault face obscured by a concentrated swirling white mass. She plunged into the blizzard, only to be smothered by burning flakes which clawed her throat and stung her eyes. By blind fortune her hands made contact with the magistrate curled upon the floor, coughing violently, sleeves pressed against nose and mouth. She knelt down, dragged the old man to her and they embraced, faces buried in each other's shoulders. When the storm ultimately passed they were as shocked as anyone to find the opened vault completely empty.
Now Dan'er reluctantly approached table one, body-wary and leg-weary. Even the porcelain in her arms seemed to clink in protest. The Wu brothers, watching eagerly, started speaking as soon as she was within earshot.
“Meimei, you look tired. Have you been getting enough rest?” The older Wu sat stocky and angular. Square head on a square body. His brows furrowed in mock-worry.
“You need to take care of yourself, Little Sister,” the younger Wu chimed in. A slighter, fairer-skinned copy of his elder. “If you don't have your health you don't have anything.”
Dan'er forced a polite smile, quashing revulsion and the urge to scream. She kept her eyes trained on the task of unloading plates, bowls, cups, chopsticks. “Thank you for your concern,” she replied cordially. “Shall I start you off with some tea, Big Brothers? Or are you ready to order?”
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The older Wu examined her up and down. “Madam seems to be feeding you well, at least,” he commented as if she hadn't spoken. “Do you finally have enough food?”
“Yes, tell us: are you satisfied?” the younger one asked with a feigned hopeful expression.
Dan'er exhaled deeply, attempted to re-center, gazed instead at Bomen seated across the table. The new darling magistrate, favored by High Heaven, for whom the famine broke soon after promotion. His oblong face, bushy black eyebrows, and knobby chin were turned towards table six. Like the brothers he had left his civil service cap and badged robe at home, opting instead for hair gathered in a simple high knob and a plain, light blue pifeng.
Bomen never looked at her these days, never engaged, coward that he was. Attention always intensely occupied or head bobbing for the next diversion. Dan'er watched his eyes shift focus from effervescent Sister Lianhua, absurdly sliding past Dan'er’s very own torso, to alight on the table. He reached forward and audaciously began rearranging the place settings she had laid out, straightening them to a personal standard only he cared about.
“It's funny, the irony that the daughter of a food-embezzling magistrate ends up serving food to the very people her father stole from,” the older Wu remarked. “Is this your way of begging forgiveness? Making amends?”
“And how do you quantify equivalent amends?” the younger Wu inquired. “By the mouths that would've been fed? By the days it took to grow the grain? By the scarcity price of grain itself?”
The older Wu caught her gaze, tilted his head quizzically. “How many bags did he misappropriate again?”
Five hundred fifty-four bags of grain had been discovered when the provincial guards smashed through her family’s private storeroom with a battering ram. Laid wall to wall and piled high enough to nearly touch the rafters, matching public vault records from last inventory. A shoddy frameup. Anyone who cared to see the truth would've noticed those weren't even the same bags. That they had been sewn shut with red string when the vault bags had been stitched with maroon, almost brown.
But people didn't seem to care for the truth, and in the months that followed Dan'er had come to realize this was the crux of her situation. It hadn't mattered what her father said then and it didn't matter what she said now. In her family’s subsequent debasement, the Wu brothers finally found common ground with the backwoods peasants. This exchange was no talk, all gawk. Here, surrounded on both sides, she was on show: last member of the disgraced Li clan. Sixteen years of personhood negated by the name, satirically garbed in the pale brown short-coat and trousers of a servant, hair bundled under a hemp rag, essentially faceless as her father.
“A bit of advice, Little Sister?” the younger Wu offered up to her protracted silence. “Begging is best done on your knees. Your mother understood that. And while you’re down there, should you get the inclination…” He shrugged and grinned suggestively.
Dan'er scarcely had time to register shock, let alone disgust, before the older Wu placed a hand possessively on her lower back, flouting House rules and sending a shiver up her spine. “Now now,” he chastened his brother. “As honorable men we ought to be considerate of her poor father. Everyone knows the old man has no more face to spare.” He ended on a slight chuckle.
Dan'er impulsively sought out Bomen. The new magistrate, looking bored with cheek propped upon one fist, had the temerity to raise a finger to call for further service. She felt her face flush, ears warming with anger.
The younger Wu leaned towards her, voice lowering conspiratorially. “As an honorable man, I want you to know I can help, to some extent. If you ever decide to open your storeroom to my seed, you could guard against future misfortune.”
Dan'er’s eyes flicked to the chopsticks then. The closest pair on the table lay positioned near her dominant hand, angled invitingly. She could just do it. Could just grab a blunt stick and ram it into the ear canal of the younger Wu before his brother intervened. Foreseeable consequences faded, fell off the edge of her periphery, pushed out by a steadily growing ball of compressed energy that threatened to burst from her chest.
The familiar sound of a folding fan snapping shut contracted her back to center. The older Wu removed his hand from her body.
“Gentleman, welcome back,” a husky voice crooned from behind, raising the hairs on Dan'er’s neck. “How was your week?”
Dan'er barely managed to squeeze aside before the buxom figure of Madam Mudan insinuated itself between the two men. Tall, ample, middle-aged and formidable, the proprietor of Hundred Flowers House loomed a solid mass of amethyst silk adorned with silver peonies. A gold filigree cone bedecked with small jewels capped a high hair bun. It curved over her head into a point, serving testament to her status.
Her arrival was readily accepted by the brothers with keenness and warmth. “Great, now that it's over,” the younger Wu chortled good-naturedly.
Madam Mudan pouted vermilion lips, barely creasing a wrinkle in her timeless face.“You men always work so hard for us. You must prioritize rest.” Her brown lucent eyes held each brother intimately in turn.
“Madam, we are kindred spirits in that regard,” the older Wu assured, brightening further when Sister Chahua appeared beside him bearing a clay teapot. She proceeded to fill his cup while Sister Meihua simultaneously took up kneading the younger Wu’s shoulders.
The newly-arrived maidens also boasted golden leaf hair pins trailing pearls in their intricate hair loops, but had advanced beyond ribbons. The embroidered flowers on their light gray pifengs–camellias for the former, plum blossoms for the latter–blossomed in several more colors than Sister Lianhua’s, including dark yellow for bedroom conversation.
Madam Mudan addressed Dan'er over her shoulder–inquiringly to the untrained ear: “Shouldn't Sister Lianhua be here with some osmanthus cakes?”
And suddenly cold fear coursed through Dan'er’s body. “Yes, Ma’am,” she murmured, before fully comprehending the situation and adding, “Of course, let me go get her.” She hastened away, wondering how much of her plans the Madam had caught onto, whether she should be terrified or mortified, and which was worse.