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Eighth Concubine
It is next to impossible for me to sit here and describer my life in the Luo household. However, for the sake of documentation, I will try my best.
I grew up in a very financially challenged house. My mother died when I was at the very young of nine. For the purposes of being able to tend to the tea fields and raise my two elder brothers and I at the same time, my father decided to re-marry to a woman from the next village, named Lin. Step-mother was a very cunning and strict woman. When the men would be away on the field, she would lock me up in the house to do all her housework for her, while she strolled into the village to buy good things to eat and meet up with the other wives for tea. I also suspect that she is also committing some kind of adultery against my father since the amount of money she spends is not comparable to how much my father is able to provide as a tea farmer.
When I was 14, father died. My brothers were kicked out of the house to fend for themselves on the street. She found the next rich man to marry me off as his eighth concubine and took a handsome dowry for herself. She sold the house and, I later learned, quickly re-married to a rich man in our village.
On the day of my wedding, I was brought to the Luo mansion by a two-person sedan chair, unlike the eight-person sedan chairs normally used for wives. I was allowed to enter through the side door, not the front. They walked me down the middle road of the mansion, which easily stretched half a mile, to the public bath house. Along the road, there were many off shoots. The first nine were obviously courtyards for the Wife and concubines (easily distinguishable by the decoration and the amount of servants in each), and then after that were the servants quarters to each side. I was given a bath by the servants, which made me very uneasy since I was used to having more privacy than that. They trimmed all of my nails and groomed my hair. I was given a plain cloth outfit and lead to the last and smallest courtyard in the establishment. The décor at the entrance is comparatively very worn-down, compared to those of glamour in front of the other courtyards – especially the gold, silver and bronze lions located at the entrance of the Wife and second and third concubines respectively. I was placed in the center of the main room, opposing the entrance of the courtyard, and told to kneel towards the entrance with the door open. There were two female servants, one stood at each side of the door, whom waited with me. After the sun had set, my stomach started growling. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but I knew that it was right after noon when I was brought to kneel. A little while later, an older lady, whom I assume was a pretty important servant in the house, brought me a bowl of thinned soup. I was very grateful even though it was not very filling. About half an hour after she left, a crew of men came to light red lanterns in the main room and along the roofs of the three sides of the courtyard. After they had left, I heard the housekeeper announce that the Master had come home. A group of four girl servants, two at each side, lit the way for him to my courtyard. They, too, waited outside the door as he entered. Especially because my position was compromised by kneeling, he towered over me, both physically and by the air which surrounded him. He was definitely in his early fifties.
After he entered the room, he looked at me and smirked. He turned, closed the door and told me to get up. I was then instructed to remove my clothing. I hesitated and he screamed him order. I jumped and did as I was told. He told me to go take one of the lanterns on a stick and stand in front of him. I was to take three turns around the room. He laid me down in the bed and wanted to make our marriage official. He took off his pants and moved onto the bed, on top of me. As soon as he penetrated me, it hurt so much that I got up and bit him on the shoulder. He slapped me hard across the face and turned me over. With his legs on mine and one of his hands pinning both of my hands behind my back, I was completely helpless. He penetrated me again, pulling my head up by the hair with his one free hand. It was so that I was ravaged and officially entered womanhood.
The next morning, I was taken by the housekeeper to visit the Wife. I was told to kneel at the front door of the main room of her courtyard until she is calls for me. I waited for over half an hour before she sent a servant to summon for me. I knelt in front of her and paid my respects. She told me that the two things I was to remember if I was to survive in the Luo household is to hold my tongue and know my place. I was given a cup of tea to serve to her. I moved towards her on my knees and spilled a couple of drops on the ground. I looked up at her just as she was giving a signal to her top servant, who always resides on the right side behind her mistress. The servant, named Xiao Que, walked over to me and slapped me hard across the face. I nearly dropped the tea cup but knew better. Her mistress said that usually her servants would get 50 strokes for such an offence but that my punishment will just be added to my training later in the week. She drank the tea and sent me on to the other concubines. I did the same for them but with slightly less drama. Although, I came to find that the second concubine has more say in the household than the Wife does, but only because the Master favors her over the normally-stern Wife.
After I visited the seventh concubine, whom I did not need to kneel to, the house keeper came to fetch us for lunch. The mess hall was a separate courtyard next to mine, further away from the front of the mansion. The main room in the center was for Master, Wife and the first two concubines. The room to the left of the center room was for the third, fourth and fifth concubines. Both of those two were very elegantly decorated with many servants waiting on the Master and mistresses – of course the former was more so than the other. The room to the right of the center room was a bit more run down and had only one old lady walking dishes to the table in the room. That, I assumed, was for the sixth and seventh concubines and myself. I was disappointed to find out that our lunch mainly consisted of dishes exhausted by occupants of the other two dining rooms. I was told before lunch that I had to be the last to stick my chopsticks into the dishes.
After lunch, my servants came to inform me that my training will start. For the first hour, I was critiqued on the exact posture that one is to assume when kneeling, when kowtowing, when walking, when bending down, when serving tea, etc. Then, I was told to kneel for an hour with a tea cup in the center of each palm, arms out parallel to the ground on each side of me. The tea cups were filled with boiling hot tea and a servant would come to refill the cups with freshly brewed hot tea every 10 minutes. The number of times that I dropped a cup would be the number of 10-minutes that would be added to the duration of this exercise.
Then, for another three hours before dinner, I was to practice those postures again. Then, dinner was to commence. Before we were to start dinner, the Wife asked my servants how my progress was during training. To m utter surprise, they told her that I was not able to do a thing right and that I probably should not be permitted to have dinner since I was the worst concubine-in-training that they have seen yet. The Wife turns to the Master and asks for his opinion. He says that since she was the one who is in charge of giving rewards and punishments in the home that, as usually, she would have the power to decide. She smiled and said, since I was new in the house and rules take long to learn, she will only reduce my dinner to broth and no further disciplinary actions will be taken – and winked at me. I told her that I don’t want them to be lenient on me – I wanted them to dish out at me what they’ve got. The Master made a face, I was brought a bowl of lukewarm broth and that was that.
The next morning, before dawn, I was woken up by two of the Wife’s servants. They had informed me that the Master had left late last night for a business trip and that the Wife wants to teach me a thing or two about how to be personable at the Luo household. Before I was able to fully register what they were saying, they each grabbed one of my arms, pulled me out of my bed, twisted each arm painfully behind my back and marched me into the Wife’s courtyard. While the Wife was still asleep in the back of the center room, the two servants lifted this curtain to the left of the room main room of the courtyard and revealed a dark and narrow pathway with doors all the way down the hall. We walked into the hall. One of the servants kicks closed the door, which is when I realized that this hall is, aside from being a secret, also sound proof due to the rubber seals along the frame of the door. I was marched down to the last room when one of the servants unlocked the door and pushed me in. Inside, there was a table with restraints in each of the four corners. They tied me down spread eagle, put a gag and plugs into all of my orifices below the waste, turned off the lights and told me that I will be left there until the Wife has her breakfast before she is ready to deal with me.
Once the lights went out, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of disappear…
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