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"What's your name?" asked Qing-jao.
"Si Wang-mu," said the girl.
Qing-jao gasped and covered her mouth, to forbid herself from laughing. But Wang-mu did not look angry--she only grimaced and looked impatient.
"I'm sorry," said Qing-jao, when she could speak. "But that is the name of--"
"The Royal Mother of the West," said Wang-mu. "Can I help it that my parents chose such a name for me?"
"It's a noble name," said Qing-jao. "My ancestor-of-the-heart was a great woman, but she was only mortal, a poet. Yours is one of the oldest of the gods."
"What good is that?" asked Wang-mu. "My parents were too presumptuous, naming me for such a distinguished god. That's why the gods will never speak to me."
It made Qing-jao sad, to hear Wang-mu speak with such bitterness. If only she knew how eagerly Qing-jao would trade places with her. To be free of the voice of the gods! Never to have to bow to the floor and trace the grain of the wood, never to wash her hands except when they got dirty . . .
Yet Qing-jao couldn't explain this to the girl. How could she understand? To Wang-mu, the godspoken were the privileged elite, infinitely wise and unapproachable. It would sound like a lie if Qing-jao explained that the burdens of the godspoken were far greater than the rewards.
Except that to Wang-mu, the godspoken had not been unapproachable--she had spoken to Qing-jao, hadn't she? So Qing-jao decided to say what was in her heart after all. "Si Wang-mu, I would gladly live the rest of my life blind, if only I could be free of the voice of the gods."
Wang-mu's mouth opened in shock, her eyes widened.
It had been a mistake to speak. Qing-jao regretted it at once. "I was joking," said Qing-jao.
"No," said Wang-mu. "Now you're lying. Then you were telling the truth." She came closer, slogging carelessly through the paddy, trampling rice plants as she came. "All my life I've seen the godspoken borne to the temple in their sedan chairs, wearing their bright silks, all people bowing to them, every computer open to them. When they speak their language is music. Who wouldn't want to be such a one?"
Qing-jao could not answer openly, could not say: Every day the gods humiliate me and make me do stupid, meaningless tasks to purify myself, and the next day it starts again. "You won't believe me, Wang-mu, but this life, out here in the fields, this is better."
"No!" cried Wang-mu. "You have been taught everything. You know all that there is to know! You can speak many languages, you can read every kind of word, you can think of thoughts that are as far above mine as my thoughts are above the thoughts of a snail."
"You speak very clearly and well," said Qing-jao. "You must have been to school."
"School!" said Wang-mu scornfully. "What do they care about school for children like me? We learned to read, but only enough to read prayers and street signs. We learned our numbers, but only enough to do the shopping. We memorized sayings of the wise, but only the ones that taught us to be content with our place in life and obey those who are wiser than we are."
Qing-jao hadn't known that schools could be like that. She thought that children in school learned the same things that she had learned from her tutors. But she saw at once that Si Wang-mu must be telling the truth--one teacher with thirty students couldn't possibly teach all the things that Qing-jao had learned as one student with many teachers.
"My parents are very low," said Wang-mu. "Why should they waste time teaching me more than a servant needs to know? Because that's my highest hope in life, to be washed very clean and become a servant in a rich man's house They were very careful to teach me how to clean a floor."
Qing-jao thought of the hours she had spent on the floors of her house, tracing woodgrains from wall to wall. It had neer once occurred to her how much work it was for the servants to keep the floors so clean and polished that Qing-jao's gowns never got visibly dirty, despite all her crawling.
"I know something about floors," said Qing-jao.
"You know something about everything," said Wang-mu bitterly. "So don't tell me how hard it is to be godspoken. The gods hae never given a thought to me, and I tell you that is worse!"
"Why weren't you afraid to speak to me?" asked Qing-jao.
"I decided not to be afraid of anything," said Wang-mu. "What could you do to me that's worse than my life will already be anyway?"
I could make you wash your hands until they bleed every day of your life.
But then something turned around in Qing-jao's mind, and she saw that this girl might not think that was worse. Perhaps Wang-mu would gladly wash her hands until there was nothing left but a bloody fringe of tattered skin on the stumps of her wrists, if only she could learn all that Qing-jao knew. Qing-jao had felt so oppressed by the impossibility of the task her father had set for her, yet it was a task that, succeed or fail, would change history. Wang-mu would live her whole life and never be set a single task that would not need to be done again the next day; all of Wang-mu's life would be spent doing work that would only be noticed or spoken of if she did it badly. Wasn't the work of a servant almost as fruitless, in the end, as the rituals of purification?
"The life of a servant must be hard," said Qing-jao. "I'm glad for your sake that you haven't been hired out yet."
"My parents are waiting in the hope that I'll be pretty when I become a woman. Then they'll get a better hiring bonus for putting me out for service. Perhaps a rich man's bodyservant will want me for his wife; perhaps a rich lady will want me for her secret maid."
"You're already pretty," said Qing-jao.
Wang-mu shrugged. "My friend Fan-liu is in service, and she says that the ugly ones work harder, but the men of the house leave them alone. Ugly ones are free to think their own thoughts. They don't keep having to say pretty things to their ladies."
