Her new family has her dowry—her chickens have become his chickens. Clipped wings fly the short distance to nowhere. Her future husband has returned to the village. His parents had sent a message to the university: Come home quickly. There is an emergency. It took several days to make the journey and he arrived weary, expecting an ailing father. Instead, a wedding ceremony with him as the man of honor, and her, sitting on the bed, dressed and waiting, vision obscured. She tries to imagine what he looks like. When he lifts the heavy red veil from her face, she sees kind eyes. She lies with him that night, spreads her legs and consecrates the marital bed. The next morning, she is alone. Her new husband has returned to school in Shanghai, a city she has only heard of. Her husband is an educated man, she cannot read or write. He is Jīdūjiào—a Christian. No one in the village understands this, not even his own parents. She tends the graves of his ancestors, looks after his mother and father as if they were her own. Nine months later, a girl is born, company for a short time—the baby dies an infant. Still he does not return. All that remains is a handful of chickens, the rest slaughtered for her wedding banquet.
“Courtyard” is about my grandfather’s first wife, an unnamed woman he married in an arranged village wedding. He left shortly after the ceremony and never returned. This marriage is dismissed in my family as one that “didn’t count,” as well as the daughter she gave birth to who died, but it counted to me. She was part of the legacy of my matrilineal line—I didn’t want her forgotten. Darien Hsu Gee on "Courtyard"
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