Old Madam Sang's Scissors
Old Madam Sang could tell from a newborn's first cry whether it was a 'lucky shoot' or a 'bitter root' — yet she never named a bitter root aloud. She saved every abandoned girl and refused to deliver children conceived by force. When Master Ma bade her drown a poor daughter-in-law's infant, she carried the girl through snow to a foundling home and turned the family back with an old debt of blood. Years later the saved girl returns as the town's first woman teacher, to kneel to her granny.
At the very end of Locust Lane stood a low cottage hung with bunches of dried mugwort, and within it a faint, year-round scent of herbs. There lived Old Madam Sang, a midwife who had delivered the babies of this district for forty years.
Most of the town's children had been brought into the world by her hands. When a wife was near her time, a flustered maid would come running to fetch her; Old Madam Sang would pick up her little red-lacquered case and hurry off on her bound feet. The case held nothing but a few pairs of scissors, some cotton twine, and a packet of mugwort ash — yet in her hands even the most stubborn birth came quietly to ground.
Old Madam Sang had a wonder about her. The moment a child was born, she would press her ear to its first cry and listen a long while. Then she would smile and say, "This one is a lucky shoot," or "This one is a bitter root." The neighbors took it for play at first, but as the years passed they found she was right nine times in ten. The lucky shoots indeed prospered; the bitter roots met their share of trouble. Yet Old Madam Sang kept a hard rule: should she hear a bitter root, she would breathe not a word of it to anyone, only quietly telling the mother, "Love this child a little more." She said, "Life is given by heaven, the words are heard by me; I will not let a single sentence of mine cut short a life."
She kept two rules still harder. The first: if a family scorned a newborn girl and meant to drown or discard her, she would gather the infant into her arms at the delivery and, if need be, carry her home and keep her for days, so long as one small life was spared. The second: should some great household summon her for a concubine or mistress gotten by force, she refused outright, pleading illness. Asked why, she would only smile coldly. "A birth conceived in another's blood — these hands of mine will not receive it."
That twelfth month of winter, the only son of Master Ma, who kept the town's money shop, took a wife. The bride was a poor man's daughter; Master Ma, though civil in manner, privately hoped the first child would be a grandson to uphold the family name. Yet when the wife came to full term, the child proved a girl.
Master Ma sought out Old Madam Sang in private and pressed a heavy gift upon her, his meaning plain: this worthless girl should be "taken care of" at once, reported to the world as stillborn, and a male heir conceived without delay.
Old Madam Sang would not take the gift; her face fell at once. On the night of the delivery she pressed the girl to her ear as ever, and her brow eased as she whispered, "A lucky shoot." Then she tucked the infant inside her padded coat and told the household only that mother and child were well and the child a boy. That very night, through the snow, she carried the baby to the foundling home in the hills and entrusted her to a trusted matron.
Some days later Master Ma sensed the deception and came with men to make trouble, accusing Old Madam Sang of cheating his family of its lineage. She did not falter. She brought out an old account: more than ten years before, another great household in the town had driven a midwife to her death, simply because that midwife refused to help drown a newborn girl — and the dead woman had been Old Madam Sang's own senior sister in the craft. Pointing at Master Ma, she said, "The lives your family owes are written down, stroke by stroke, in my book. Lay a finger on this girl today, and see what follows."
Master Ma, fearing the scandal would ruin his money shop's name, could only withdraw in chagrin.
A dozen years slipped by. That spring a woman teacher came to the town, sent by the county to instruct girls in school. On her first day free she walked straight to the end of Locust Lane and dropped to her knees before Old Madam Sang, crying, "Granny."
Old Madam Sang squinted a long moment before she knew her: the infant she had tucked inside her coat that snowy night. She drew the woman in, took up the old pair of scissors, and pressed them to the teacher's ear as she had long ago, then laughed. "When I heard your first cry, I knew you were no bitter root but a lucky shoot. Now you have come back to teach the girls their letters — that fortune has at last touched the ground."
Outside, the mugwort scented the air; inside, the lives of two generations met and were gently joined.