The Binding Chair Read Online Free PDF Page A

than her grandmother’s.
    “These slippers are yours,” Yu-ying said. “I will help you to wear them.”
    Yu-ying kneeled at May’s feet. Next to her was a black lacquer tray on which was a roll of white binding cloth, a knife, a jar of alum, a needle and thread, a paintbrush, and a water chestnut. Yu-ying said a prayer to Kuanyin and gave May the water chestnut to hold in her left hand and the paintbrush to hold in her right. The chestnut, Yu-ying explained, would help May’s feet to grow tender, the brush would make them narrow.
    “See the white cloth,” she said, unrolling one end of it. “This is the fragrant white path you will travel. This is the journey from girl to woman.” She walked backward from the bowl, pulling the linen out into an undulating, hypnotic banner.
    May nodded, slowly.
    Yu-ying took May’s left foot in her hand and dried it. She cut the toenails and sprinkled the sole with alum, and then she took one end of the white bandage and held it on the inside of the instep and from there pulled the strip of cloth over the arch of May’s foot and on over her four smaller toes, so that they curled under, into the sole. Then Yu-ying pulled the bandage tightly around the heel, and then over the arch and the toes again, making layers of deft figure eights. When she was finished, only May’s big toe was left unfolded. From under its nail she could feel the thrumming of blood.
    “Oh!” May said, surprised. She opened her hands and the chestnut and brush fell to the floor. Her father’s mother had never before hurt her. “Please, Grandmother!” May tried to pull her foot away, but Yu-ying held it tightly and looked into her eyes.
    “Did I not make the offerings to your patron god on the day of your birth and for every year after that?”
    May nodded.
    “And when you were a baby and could not sleep, was I not the one who fetched your soul back?”
    May nodded again.
    “Well, I am telling you that you may not speak now,” Yu-ying said. “You must be quiet while I do this.” And she sewed the end of the bandage in place with a needle and strong thread. When she had finished with the left, she began with the right. It was astonishing that so small a woman had such strength.
    May, obedient, said nothing while her grandmother bound her feet, but when Yu-ying put on the first pair of training shoes and told May to stand and to walk back to her mother’s quarters, she refused.
    “I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
    “You will,” said Yu-ying. And she pulled May to her feet; she kicked the red and gold chair out from under her.
    May sat down hard on the floor. The pain in her feet was sharp, like teeth. Dizzy, she closed her eyes and saw her grandmother’s hand pulling the long needle right through the flesh of her toes.
    “Walk,” Yu-ying said. “It will not work unless you walk.”
    “I feel sick. I want my mother.”
    “Then get up and go to her.”
    “I can’t,” May said.
    Yu-ying shrugged. She collected the bowl and the towel, the knife with which she’d pared May’s nails. She picked up the water chestnut and the paintbrush from where May had dropped them.
    “Please,” May said.
    “What?”
    “Help me.”
    “I am,” Yu-ying said, and she walked out of the room.
    I T TOOK M AY an hour to reach her mother’s wing of the house. She began by crawling, but her grandmother caught her and made her stand. “No woman in my family, no daughter of my son, goes on four legs like a turtle!” Yu-ying watched as her granddaughter pulled herself up by the edge of a small table. Then, when May still did not walk, Yu-ying got on the other side of the table and began dragging it away, out from May’s hands, so that in order to remain upright she had to follow.
    “Don’t you dare let go,” Yu-ying said. “If you let go, I’ll bind them tighter. And don’t make a sound, just walk. Just walk toward me.” She looked at May, looked into her eyes and kept them locked in her gaze as