The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan Page B

punched her in the eye. She jumped up and cried out in horror. I had delivered one of the worst things that could happen to a girl: a black eye. She would not be able to appear at parties for as long as the bruise was visible. Misty Cloud shrieked and lunged at me and slapped my face, vowing she would kill me. The other girls and attendants screamed for us to stop. The menservants rushed in and pulled us apart.
    All at once, everyone fell silent, and the only sounds were Misty Cloud’s curses. It was my mother and Golden Dove. I thought Mother had come to rescue me. But a moment later, I noticed her eyes had gone as gray as knives.
    Misty Cloud cried in a fake way: “She damaged my eye—”
    I put my hand to my neck, as if it hurt. “She almost choked me to death!”
    “I want money for my eye!” Misty Cloud shouted. “I was making more money for you than the others, and if I can’t work until my eye is better, I want the money I would have earned.”
    My mother stared at her. “If I do not give it to you, then what will you do?”
    “I’ll leave and tell everyone that this brat is a half-breed.”
    “Well, we can’t have you going around telling lies simply because you’re angry. Violet, tell her you’re sorry.”
    Misty Cloud gave me a sneer of victory. “What about my money?” she said to my mother.
    Mother turned and left the room without answering her. I followed, puzzled that she had not stood up for me. When we reached her room, I cried, “She called me a half-breed bastard.”
    Mother cursed under her breath. Usually she laughed at people’s insults. But this time, her silence frightened me. I wanted her to quell my fears.
    “Is it true? Am I half-Chinese? Do I have a Chinese father?”
    She turned around and said in a dangerous voice: “Your father is dead. I told you that. Do not talk about this again, not to anyone.”
    I was terrified by the deadness in her voice, by the many fears it put in my heart. What was true? Which was worse?
    The next day, Misty Cloud was gone. She was kicked out, the others said. I felt no victory now, only queasiness that I had inflicted greater harm than I had intended. I knew the reason she was gone. She had spilled the truth. Would she now spread it wherever she went?
    I asked the gatekeeper if he knew where Misty Cloud had gone.
    Cracked Egg was scraping a rusty bolt. “She was too busy spitting insults at your mother to stop on her way out and give me the address of her new house. With that black eye, she might not have anywhere to go for a while.”
    “Did you hear what she called me?” I was anxious for the answer that would tell me how far the lie had spread.
    “Ai-ya. Don’t listen to her. She’s the one who has mixed blood,” he said. “She thinks the white part of her makes her as good as you.”
    White? Misty Cloud had dark eyes and dark hair. No one would mistake her for being anything but pure Chinese.
    “Do you think I look half-Chinese?” I asked him quietly.
    He looked at me and laughed. “You look nothing like her.” He went back to scraping the bolt.
    I was relieved.
    And then he said, “Certainly not half. Maybe just a few drops.”
    A cold fear ran from scalp to toes.
    “Eh, I was only joking.” He said it in a soft tone, one that was too comforting.
    “Her mother was half-Swedish,” I later heard Cracked Egg tell an attendant, “married to a Shanghainese, who soon died and left her all alone with a baby. Her husband’s family refused to recognize her as his widow, and since she had no family of her own, she had no choice but to turn tricks on the streets. And then, when she sawmen asking for Misty Cloud when she was only eleven, she sold her to a first-class courtesan house, where she would at least have some chance at a better life than hers. That’s what I heard from the gatekeeper at the House of Li where Misty Cloud worked before she came here. If she had not thrown a fit at the madam there, she might have been able to