The Binding Chair by Kathryn Harrison

the bearers wouldn’t take her. The sun began to set, the four men drew cloaks over their heads and leaned their backs against the wall around the courtyard. May sat shivering and willed herself not to cry. “Don’t worry,” said one. “This happened with the third.”
    She looked at him. “The third what?”
    He rolled his eyes. “What are you? Simple? The third wife. The one before you.”
    May said nothing. She widened her eyes, she drew in her breath sharply, but her mouth she kept closed. She was not so young that she would betray her shock to a servant and thereby widen the net of her own vulnerability. Instead, she shrugged. She sat back against the cushions; she yawned and unfolded her arms as if she’d known all along, of course, that she was not to be the silk dealer’s first wife but his fourth.
    The sedan chair man watched her. “It could be all night,” he said. “There’s a pot under the seat if you want to go.”
    May didn’t answer. She forced herself to wait until all four of the bearers were asleep, and then she drew the curtains and fastened them before clumsily squatting to urinate, her wedding dress bunched up under her arms.
    Outside, from beyond the wall, came a high, shrill wailing. Had the sedan chair offered any room for May, in her awkward crouch, to startle and upset the contents of the pot, she would have. But as it was, jammed tight between the wooden front of the vehicle and its upholstered seat, motionless she listened to what sounded like the screams of not one but many women. Though the howls were not intelligible words, they conveyed a quality of conversation, as if one answered another.
    May got to her feet and, having no place to empty it, replaced the pot carefully. She peered out of a crack between the curtains at the bearers. Eyes still closed, they slept through the racket undisturbed, and how could this be? Was she hallucinating the howls? Were they a message from the gods of matrimony, a message sent only to her, a woman on her wedding day?
    The wind picked up, and in the dark behind the trembling red fabric around her, May smoothed her skirts, she felt to see if her hair was still in place, she sat—she couldn’t have said for how long—as if hypnotized. When the curtains blew apart, she made no move to refasten them but watched as the clouds fled, revealing stars, remote and immaculate, a moon wasted thin as an eyelash.
    Just before midnight—it was still the first day of the second month—the door in the wall opened, and four women appeared, one considerably older than the others. May knew orthodox customs of marriage required that a new wife could not step over the threshold unless escorted by an established woman of the house, either the master’s mother or one of his wives, preferably the first; but having waited all night, the last thing she expected to see was a full entourage. The expressions on the four women’s faces implied that they had at last decided to share the burden of their distasteful duty.
    May stood and bowed. Seeing the women, she understood that she had come to a place where beauty would be no guarantee of favor. She felt the first wife’s hand burn with jealousy as she helped her to step down from the sedan.
    O NCE INSIDE THE gracious, well-tended garden, May looked for nuptial preparations, but there was no awning set up, no tables with food or drinks. No lanterns, no guests, no offerings. Nothing. Could it be that no celebration was expected? Without walking, May stumbled, as if what she saw—what she didn’t see—had literally jarred her. A servant brought a chair, and she sat, silently, feeling as though she had fallen out of gravity or some equally powerful force, whatever kept her securely placed in the world.
    To her predicament May applied whatever of Yu-ying’s proverbs she could, but, like small bandages on a large wound, they fell away, useless. Worse, the disillusion that began at the front gate intensified with each