content warning: implied gendered violence
IALWAYS THINK OF THE BRIDGE first: the grainy stone arch, the shadow of its underbelly forming a circle with the reflection on the river water, where lotuses lazily drifted.
The river surrounding our village always teemed with life. Recently married young women with their fully-bloomed milky lotuses, older women with white skirts bunched at their waist, where their flowers grew as sparse as their black hair. Mirrored on the clear water, the pale shapes of petals and clothing meshed together until they formed a snowy landscape, the way my mother imagined snow from blank parchment on ink paintings. Rickety canoes of dark wood floated up and down the river, drifting with soft chatter and high-pitched laughter.
My mother would sit on the mud-stained bank when her daughter was young, chatting with neighbours as she scrubbed the laundry or repaired a winter cloak, while the men in her life existed on land – trekking through the woods to cut bamboo for structures and long grass stems for rope, directing boats upstream to catch fish, or weaving through the marketplace streets to barter for coal. She would often repeat a saying to her child, that the daughters of the village were born and died in the river, and her daughter would think of mythical nymphs with leaf-textured skin.
Once, her daughter picked up a rock and threw it into the water. Perfect rings rippled out, nudging lotus pads out of the way.
My mother smacked her daughter’s hand, hard enough to stun but not sting. ‘The river is in the blood of us women,’ she admonished. ‘It’s been flowing through us from our ancestors, a bloodline as old as the Milky Way. We disrespect the river; we disrespect ourselves.’ Then she rubbed her daughter’s palm as if in apology.
This is her daughter’s image of her: perched on the reed bedspread, spine curving forward slightly at the waist, moonlight filtering in, muted and murky, from paper windows set in thick, rough walls. She stroked the base of every lotus growing from her skin, the positions stamped into her fingers, each petal adjusted with a gossamer touch to undo the day’s activities. I hope she knows that I’m sorry.
My mother would sit on the mud-stained bank when her daughter was young, chatting with neighbours as she scrubbed the laundry or repaired a winter cloak, while the men in her life existed on land – trekking through the woods to cut bamboo for structures and long grass stems for rope, directing boats upstream to catch fish, or weaving through the marketplace streets to barter for coal. She would often repeat a saying to her child, that the daughters of the village were born and died in the river, and her daughter would think of mythical nymphs with leaf-textured skin.
Once, her daughter picked up a rock and threw it into the water. Perfect rings rippled out, nudging lotus pads out of the way.
My mother smacked her daughter’s hand, hard enough to stun but not sting. ‘The river is in the blood of us women,’ she admonished. ‘It’s been flowing through us from our ancestors, a bloodline as old as the Milky Way. We disrespect the river; we disrespect ourselves.’ Then she rubbed her daughter’s palm as if in apology.
This is her daughter’s image of her: perched on the reed bedspread, spine curving forward slightly at the waist, moonlight filtering in, muted and murky, from paper windows set in thick, rough walls. She stroked the base of every lotus growing from her skin, the positions stamped into her fingers, each petal adjusted with a gossamer touch to undo the day’s activities. I hope she knows that I’m sorry.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
OF THE VILLAGE WOMEN, my mother gossiped with her neighbour Sun Ma most often. Her eight-year-old daughter was no conversationalist but a good playmate for Sun Ma’s daughter Aizi, who was a couple of years older. Aizi used to grab her little girl’s hand to sneak away from the adults weaving grass baskets in the river. The two would take turns hiding in the bamboo thicket behind the houses. ‘You need to stop running away again,’ My mother would scold when they returned with leaf stains on their knees and their long ebony hair released from their buns, a scraggly mess. ‘Come into the river to clean up.’ But then she’d look away for a minute, and the two kids would’ve disappeared again. Sun Ma would laugh, deep- throated in a way that shook loose a couple of petals, saying, ‘Now, where did they go again?’ And my mother would shake her head, returning to her stitching with feet dipped ankle-deep in the green water.
One year, Aizi banged on the battered door of my mother’s house, demanding to see her friend. ‘I need to show you something,’ she gushed, her pigtails swinging on either side of her head, tugging the other girl’s wrist. They stumbled down the cracked stone-paved path between our houses, where moss-stained tears trailed down from the roof ledges into splotches of mildew that clung to the walls. When they were hidden from the village by a screen of green, densely-packed bamboo, she lifted her sleeve. On her wrist sat a teardrop-shaped bud the colour of a ruddy child’s cheeks. Her daughter bent down to peer at it – thin threads connected the pink-gilded edge to the green base.
‘You got a pink one first!’ her daughter exclaimed, her voice hushed for an unknown reason. No one had told her, but somehow, she knew that pink was white stained with hints of blood.
Her daughter told my mother all about it as they brushed their hair at night. My mother watched for Aizi’s bud the next day at the river, but it was gone, her sleeve wrapped tight around her forearm. My mother nodded to herself.
Aizi matured into a young lady, skin delicate as a newborn petal, shiny eyes sharp as a winter night. Lotuses – all the same shade, the pure white of virgin snow – wreathed her slim body. And my mother learned, from her daughter, that she met a boy. Some boy she refused to talk about but made her hide her face and sprout several new buds.
Then one morning my mother left the house early with her daughter to barter for eggs before the rush, and she saw Aizi running home. All her flowers had turned a brilliant rouge, matching the redness of her eyes. My mother asked Sun Ma where Aizi was the next day at the river, but Sun Ma didn’t respond, instead kicking the water near the riverbed and making the sand swirl up and fog the water. Days passed, and my mother did glimpse Aizi a few times, a cloak wrapped around her with corners of pink peeking out from the edges, taking the overgrown path that winded around the village. My mother mentioned it to her husband once. He said he’d noticed it too, and he never saw Aizi’s father the same way again. Then they both clammed their mouth shut when their daughter entered the cramped dining room.
The other village women would talk about Aizi, too. Their lotuses, intertwined with their skirts, covered their entire bodies and reflected in the river’s ripples, white against the bright red and yellow fruit in reed baskets hugged against their hips. My mother had this gift of responding to someone in the exact same tone of voice, in a shamelessness that would make her daughter turn her head. Perhaps she sensed that this habit of gossiping, which was once a blanket of security, had become a danger.
The son of the retired general, the one who lives in that large house on the other side of the town, was engaged the year after. The whole village hung up lanterns for the wedding, like ripe persimmons glowing with golden haloes, swinging from the tiled eaves. Sun Ma was there without her daughter. The bride was a girl younger than Aizi, veiled head to toe in pure white, with small blooms snaking up her neck and braiding themselves into her hair like expensive, imported lace.
A week after that, my mother went to the river without her daughter for the first time since she was born. That night, she brought her daughter to a house a few streets away from ours, and they laid in a swaddle of patched cloth in my aunt’s dining room, listening to the creaking frogs outside and the wailing wind from farther away.
By the next morning, Sun Ma had moved to the other side of town. My mother always suspected that Sun Ma blamed her. Maybe it was instinct for mothers to believe anything but the possibility that they had hurt their children somehow.
I never saw Aizi again, but I noticed that for the next few weeks, the white lotuses in the river in front of our houses were stained slightly pink.
One year, Aizi banged on the battered door of my mother’s house, demanding to see her friend. ‘I need to show you something,’ she gushed, her pigtails swinging on either side of her head, tugging the other girl’s wrist. They stumbled down the cracked stone-paved path between our houses, where moss-stained tears trailed down from the roof ledges into splotches of mildew that clung to the walls. When they were hidden from the village by a screen of green, densely-packed bamboo, she lifted her sleeve. On her wrist sat a teardrop-shaped bud the colour of a ruddy child’s cheeks. Her daughter bent down to peer at it – thin threads connected the pink-gilded edge to the green base.
‘You got a pink one first!’ her daughter exclaimed, her voice hushed for an unknown reason. No one had told her, but somehow, she knew that pink was white stained with hints of blood.
Her daughter told my mother all about it as they brushed their hair at night. My mother watched for Aizi’s bud the next day at the river, but it was gone, her sleeve wrapped tight around her forearm. My mother nodded to herself.
Aizi matured into a young lady, skin delicate as a newborn petal, shiny eyes sharp as a winter night. Lotuses – all the same shade, the pure white of virgin snow – wreathed her slim body. And my mother learned, from her daughter, that she met a boy. Some boy she refused to talk about but made her hide her face and sprout several new buds.
Then one morning my mother left the house early with her daughter to barter for eggs before the rush, and she saw Aizi running home. All her flowers had turned a brilliant rouge, matching the redness of her eyes. My mother asked Sun Ma where Aizi was the next day at the river, but Sun Ma didn’t respond, instead kicking the water near the riverbed and making the sand swirl up and fog the water. Days passed, and my mother did glimpse Aizi a few times, a cloak wrapped around her with corners of pink peeking out from the edges, taking the overgrown path that winded around the village. My mother mentioned it to her husband once. He said he’d noticed it too, and he never saw Aizi’s father the same way again. Then they both clammed their mouth shut when their daughter entered the cramped dining room.
The other village women would talk about Aizi, too. Their lotuses, intertwined with their skirts, covered their entire bodies and reflected in the river’s ripples, white against the bright red and yellow fruit in reed baskets hugged against their hips. My mother had this gift of responding to someone in the exact same tone of voice, in a shamelessness that would make her daughter turn her head. Perhaps she sensed that this habit of gossiping, which was once a blanket of security, had become a danger.
The son of the retired general, the one who lives in that large house on the other side of the town, was engaged the year after. The whole village hung up lanterns for the wedding, like ripe persimmons glowing with golden haloes, swinging from the tiled eaves. Sun Ma was there without her daughter. The bride was a girl younger than Aizi, veiled head to toe in pure white, with small blooms snaking up her neck and braiding themselves into her hair like expensive, imported lace.
A week after that, my mother went to the river without her daughter for the first time since she was born. That night, she brought her daughter to a house a few streets away from ours, and they laid in a swaddle of patched cloth in my aunt’s dining room, listening to the creaking frogs outside and the wailing wind from farther away.
By the next morning, Sun Ma had moved to the other side of town. My mother always suspected that Sun Ma blamed her. Maybe it was instinct for mothers to believe anything but the possibility that they had hurt their children somehow.
I never saw Aizi again, but I noticed that for the next few weeks, the white lotuses in the river in front of our houses were stained slightly pink.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
EVERY NIGHT AT THE DINNER TABLE, her daughter used to listen to my father talk about his day, eyes wide and bouncing with questions. She would always ask to go with him the next day instead of to the river ‘just to see what it was like.’ My mother would always hush her and nudge her bowl of rice until one evening, her daughter asked, ‘Why is the river so important?’
‘One day, you will have lotuses like I do,’ my mother answered, lifting her sleeve to display the line of white flowers snaking up her arm. ‘These lotuses need the river to survive. Without it, they will shrivel up and fall off.’
‘And then what?’
My mother inhaled, her jaw jerked, and my father answered instead. ‘If you die without enough white lotuses, your soul won’t be able to return to the river. You will stay on this earth and suffer eternally, as will every man – father, husband, and son – you love.’
‘Eat your dinner,’ my mother said, shifting her daughter’s bowl towards her again.
Years after her daughter stopped asking, after Aizi’s name had faded from everyone’s lips, her daughter had her first flower. Pink. My mother showed her how to pull it out slowly, so that it wouldn’t cause bleeding and knitted scars where it healed, even though it hurt even more that way.
Her daughter had a white flower the next night. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ My mother crooned. Her daughter gently brushed her hand away, cupping the closed- up silky petals, as smooth as a baby’s skin against her fingertips. My mother had hoped she’d be more excited. Maybe it was then that she first suspected her daughter was fading away.
They saw Sun Ma one day at the market, about two years after that first lotus. ‘What happened to Aizi?’ Her daughter asked that night, facing away in a low bamboo stool as my mother helped with her nightly pruning. My mother’s hand paused on the lotus she was about to pluck, her breath catching in her chest.
‘What happened?’ her daughter repeated again after a long silence where my mother hoped her daughter would drop the subject. A flickering candle beside wooden panels of their door radiated dim orange light, so the white flowers all faded into the pink and the pink into the white. Then, ‘Did you know beforehand?’ ‘Aizi didn’t listen to her mother when she was told to prune her pink lotuses.
You will not make the same mistake.’
A pause. Her daughter shied away when my mother reached for her again. ‘I can do it myself.’
And that was the end of it. Of everything.
My mother had the perfect daughter. Pretty, obedient, spoke only when spoken to. But she never bragged about it to the other river women; she never once mentioned how quietly her daughter set the dinner table or how she walked with lowered lashes, even when everyone else commented on how luscious and bright her lotuses were. Deep down, my mother knew the child she’d birthed and raised; she knew that her daughter was only playing the game. She put the wooden box her daughter was rifling through back to its rightful place, at the back of her bedside cupboard, without mentioning a word – a box filled to the brim with scrunched-up paper lotuses that she used on her wedding to cover up bare spots of skin. But she kept quiet because mothers would do anything but believe the possibility that they had hurt their child.
My mother wasn’t watching when I stepped onto the bridge; my feet pointed towards the narrow green path that led into the bamboo woods, towards where I heard the city was. I imagined her face if she’d seen me, though, wrinkled with tired lines, pinched brows, and hard eyes. I’d broken off a loose piece of stone from the bridge, where the edges of the railing had crumbled. I’d looked over the side at the perfect circle the arch formed with the river and threw it in. The image wavered, broken up by my ripples.
‘One day, you will have lotuses like I do,’ my mother answered, lifting her sleeve to display the line of white flowers snaking up her arm. ‘These lotuses need the river to survive. Without it, they will shrivel up and fall off.’
‘And then what?’
My mother inhaled, her jaw jerked, and my father answered instead. ‘If you die without enough white lotuses, your soul won’t be able to return to the river. You will stay on this earth and suffer eternally, as will every man – father, husband, and son – you love.’
‘Eat your dinner,’ my mother said, shifting her daughter’s bowl towards her again.
Years after her daughter stopped asking, after Aizi’s name had faded from everyone’s lips, her daughter had her first flower. Pink. My mother showed her how to pull it out slowly, so that it wouldn’t cause bleeding and knitted scars where it healed, even though it hurt even more that way.
Her daughter had a white flower the next night. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ My mother crooned. Her daughter gently brushed her hand away, cupping the closed- up silky petals, as smooth as a baby’s skin against her fingertips. My mother had hoped she’d be more excited. Maybe it was then that she first suspected her daughter was fading away.
They saw Sun Ma one day at the market, about two years after that first lotus. ‘What happened to Aizi?’ Her daughter asked that night, facing away in a low bamboo stool as my mother helped with her nightly pruning. My mother’s hand paused on the lotus she was about to pluck, her breath catching in her chest.
‘What happened?’ her daughter repeated again after a long silence where my mother hoped her daughter would drop the subject. A flickering candle beside wooden panels of their door radiated dim orange light, so the white flowers all faded into the pink and the pink into the white. Then, ‘Did you know beforehand?’ ‘Aizi didn’t listen to her mother when she was told to prune her pink lotuses.
You will not make the same mistake.’
A pause. Her daughter shied away when my mother reached for her again. ‘I can do it myself.’
And that was the end of it. Of everything.
My mother had the perfect daughter. Pretty, obedient, spoke only when spoken to. But she never bragged about it to the other river women; she never once mentioned how quietly her daughter set the dinner table or how she walked with lowered lashes, even when everyone else commented on how luscious and bright her lotuses were. Deep down, my mother knew the child she’d birthed and raised; she knew that her daughter was only playing the game. She put the wooden box her daughter was rifling through back to its rightful place, at the back of her bedside cupboard, without mentioning a word – a box filled to the brim with scrunched-up paper lotuses that she used on her wedding to cover up bare spots of skin. But she kept quiet because mothers would do anything but believe the possibility that they had hurt their child.
My mother wasn’t watching when I stepped onto the bridge; my feet pointed towards the narrow green path that led into the bamboo woods, towards where I heard the city was. I imagined her face if she’d seen me, though, wrinkled with tired lines, pinched brows, and hard eyes. I’d broken off a loose piece of stone from the bridge, where the edges of the railing had crumbled. I’d looked over the side at the perfect circle the arch formed with the river and threw it in. The image wavered, broken up by my ripples.
Kylie Wang is a Taiwanese writer who moved to California from Hong Kong and now studies engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Her short works have received 40+ awards and publications. Her debut novel, Stuck in Her Head, won Gold for Best First YA Book in the 2024 IPPYs. Instagram: @kyliewangwrites
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