“I will relay your message,” she said at last, her voice filled with kindness and a deep understanding that agitated me, “but know this. You are a rare person. I saw that long ago. Everyone in our county envies your good luck. Everyone wishes you longevity and prosperity. But I see you breaking two hearts. It is so sad. I remember the little girl you were. You had nothing but a pretty pair of feet. Now you have abundance in your life, Lady Lu—an abundance of malice, ingratitude, and forgetfulness.”
She hobbled out the door. I heard her get into her palanquin and order her bearers to take her to Jintian. I could not believe that I had allowed her to have the last word.
A YEAR WENT
by. The day of Snow Flower’s cousin’s Sitting and Singing in the Upstairs Chamber next door approached. I was still devastated, my mind beating a never-ending rhythm—ta dum, ta dum, ta dum—like a heart or a woman’s chant. Snow Flower and I had planned to go to the celebration together. I didn’t know if she would still come. If she did, I hoped we could avoid a confrontation. I didn’t want to fight her as I’d fought my mother.
The tenth day of the tenth month arrived—a good and propitious date for the neighbor girl to begin her wedding activities. I walked next door and went to the upstairs chamber. The bride was pretty in a wan sort of way. Her sworn sisters sat around her. I spotted Madame Wang and, next to her, Snow Flower: clean, her hair pulled back in the style befitting a married lady, and dressed in one of the outfits I had given her. That sensitive spot where my ribs came together above my stomach constricted. The blood seemed to drain from my head and I thought I might faint. I didn’t know if I could sit through this event with Snow Flower in the room and still maintain my dignity as a woman. I quickly glanced at the other faces. Snow Flower had not brought Willow, Lotus, or Plum Blossom with her for companionship. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. If one of them had been there, I would have run away.
I took a seat across the room from Snow Flower and her aunt. The celebration had all of the usual singing, complaints, stories, and jokes. Then the mother of the bride asked Snow Flower to tell us of her life since leaving Tongkou.
“Today I will sing a Letter of Vituperation,” Snow Flower announced.
This was not at all what I had anticipated. How could Snow Flower possibly want to make a public grievance against me when I was the one who had been wronged? If anything, I should have prepared a chant of accusation and retaliation.
“The pheasant squawks and the sound carries far,” she began. The women in the room turned to her upon hearing the familiar opening for this traditional type of communication. Then Snow Flower began to sing in that same ta dum, ta dum, ta dum rhythm I had been hearing for months. “For five days I burned incense and prayed to find the courage to come here. For three days I boiled fragrant water to cleanse my skin and my clothing so I would be presentable to my old friends. I have put my soul into my song. As a girl, I was prized as a daughter, but everyone here knows how hard my life has been. I lost my natal home. I lost my natal family. The women in my family have been unlucky for two generations. My husband is not kind. My mother-in-law is cruel. I have been pregnant seven times, but only three babies breathed the air of this world. Now only a son and a daughter live. It seems I am cursed by fate. I must have done bad deeds in a former life. I am seen as less than others.”
The bride’s sworn sisters wept in sympathy as they were supposed to. Their mothers listened attentively—oohing and aahing over the sad parts, shaking their heads at the inevitability of a woman’s fate, and admiring the way that Snow Flower drew upon our language of misery.
“I had but one happiness in my life, my laotong,” Snow Flower went on—ta dum, ta dum, ta dum. “In our contract we wrote there would never be a harsh word between us, and for twenty-seven years this was so. We always spoke true words. We were like long vines, reaching out to each other, forever entwined. But when I told her of my sadness, she had no patience. When she saw how poor I was in spirit, she reminded me that men farm and women weave, that industriousness brings no hunger, believing I could change my destiny. But how can there be a world without the poor and ill-fated?”
I watched the women in the room cry for her. I was beyond stunned.
“Why have you turned away from me?” she sang out, her voice high and beautiful. “You and I are laotong—together in our souls even when we couldn’t be together in our daily lives.” Abruptly she brought in a new subject. “And why have you hurt my daughter? Spring Moon is too young to understand why, and you will not say. I did not expect you to have a malicious heart. I beg you to remember that once our good feeling was as deep as the sea. Do not make a third generation of women suffer.”
At this last bit, the air in the room changed as the others took in this final injustice. Life was hard enough for girls without my making it harder for someone far weaker than myself.
I drew myself up. I was Lady Lu, the woman with the greatest respect in the county, and I should have risen above this. Instead, I listened to that inner music that had been pounding in my head and heart for months now.
“The pheasant squawks and the sound carries far,” I said, as a Letter of Vituperation began to form in my mind. I still wanted to be reasonable, so I addressed Snow Flower’s last and most unfair accusation first. I looked from woman to woman as I sang. “Our two girls cannot be laotong. They are not the same in any way. Your old neighbor wants something for her daughter, but I won’t break the taboo. In saying no, I have done what any mother would do.”
Then, “All the women in this room know hardship. As girls, we are raised as useless branches. We may love our families, but we are not with them for long. We marry out into villages we do not know, into families we do not know, to men we do not know. We work endlessly, and if we complain we lose what little respect our in-laws have for us. We bear children; sometimes they die, sometimes we die. When our husbands tire of us, they take in concubines. We have all faced adversity—crops that don’t come in, winters that are too cold, planting seasons with no rain. None of this is so special, but this woman seeks special attention for her woes.”
I turned to Snow Flower. Tears stung my eyes as I sang to her, and I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. “You and I were matched as a pair of mandarin ducks. I always remained true, but you’ve shunned me to embrace sworn sisters. A girl sends a fan to one girl, not writing new ones to many. A good horse does not have two saddles; a good woman is not unfaithful to her laotong. Perhaps your perfidy is why your husband, your mother-in-law, your children, and, yes, the betrayed old same before you, do not cherish you as they might. You shame us all with your girlish fancies. If my husband came home today with a concubine, I would be thrown from my bed, neglected, dismissed from his attentions. I—as all the women here—would have to accept it. But . . . from . . . you . . .”
My throat closed in on itself and the tears I’d been holding back escaped from my eyes. For a moment I thought I couldn’t go on. I shifted away from my own pain and tried to bring this back to something all the women in the room would understand. “We might expect this loss of affection from our husbands—they have a right, and we are only women—but to endure this from another woman, who by her very sex has experienced much cruelty just by living, is merciless.”
I went on, reminding my neighbors of my status, of my husband who had brought salt to the village, and of the way he had made sure that all of the people of Tongkou were transported to safety during the rebellion.
“My doorstep is clean,” I declared, then turned to Snow Flower. “But what about yours?”
At that moment, an untapped spring of anger came bubbling to the surface, and not one woman in that room stopped me from expressing it. The words I used came from such a dark and bitter place that I felt as though I’d been sliced open with a knife. I knew everything about Snow Flower, and I proceeded to use it against her under the guise of social correctness and the strength of my being Lady Lu. I humiliated he
r in front of the other women, revealing every weakness. I held nothing back, because I had lost all control. Unbidden, a long-ago memory came to me of my younger sister’s leg flailing and her loose bindings twirling around her. With each invective I threw out, I felt as though my bindings had come loose and I was finally free to say what I really thought. It took me many years to realize that my perceptions at this time were completely wrong. The bindings weren’t flying through the air and slapping at my laotong. Rather, they were whirling tighter and tighter around me, trying to squeeze away the deep-heart love I’d longed for my entire life.
“This woman who was your neighbor took with her a dowry that was made from her mother’s dowry, so that when that poor woman went out onto the street she had no quilts or clothes to keep her warm,” I proclaimed. “This woman who was your neighbor does not keep a clean house. Her husband carries on a polluted business, killing pigs on a platform outside her front door. This woman who was your neighbor had many talents, but she squandered them, refusing to teach the women in her husband’s household our secret language. This woman who was your neighbor lied about her circumstances as a girl in her daughter days, lied as a young woman in her hair-pinning days, and continues to lie as a wife and mother in her rice-and-salt days. She has lied not only to all of you but to her laotong as well.”
I paused, gauging the women’s faces around me. “How does she spend her time? I’ll tell you how! Her lust! Animals go into heat seasonally, but this woman is always in heat. Her rutting causes the whole household to go silent. When we were in the mountains running from the rebels”—I rocked forward and the others leaned toward me—“she did bed business with her husband rather than be with me—her laotong. She says she must have done bad deeds in a former life, but I, as Lady Lu, tell you that her bad deeds in this life made her fate.”
Snow Flower sat across from me, tears running down her cheeks, but I was so desolate and confused that I could show only my anger.
“We wrote a contract as girls,” I concluded. “You made a promise, which you broke.”
Snow Flower took a deep quivering breath. “You once asked that I always tell you the truth, but when I tell it to you, you misunderstand or you don’t like what you hear. I have found women in my village who do not look down on me. They do not criticize me. They do not expect me to be someone I am not.”
Every word she spoke reinforced everything I had suspected.
“They do not humiliate me in front of others,” Snow Flower went on. “I have embroidered with them, and we console one another when we are troubled. They do not pity me. They visit me when I have not been well. . . . I am lonely and alone. I need women to comfort me every day, not just at the times of your choosing. I need women who can hear me as I am and not how they remember me or wish me to be. I feel like a bird flying alone. I cannot find my mate. . . .”
Her soft words and gentle excuses were just what I was afraid of. I closed my eyes, trying to block my feelings. To protect myself I had to hold on to this grievance as I had with my mother. When I opened my eyes, Snow Flower had lifted herself to her feet and was delicately swaying toward the stairs. When Madame Wang did not follow her, I felt a pang of sympathy. Even her own aunt, the only one among us who made a living and survived on her wits, would not offer solace.
As Snow Flower disappeared step-by-step down the stairs, I promised myself I would never see her again.
WHEN I LOOK
back on that day, I know that I failed terribly in my duties and obligations as a woman. What she had done was unforgivable, but what I said was despicable. I had let my anger, hurt, and ultimately my desire for revenge take control of my actions. Ironically, the very things that embarrassed me and that I later felt much regret over completed my passage to becoming Lady Lu. My neighbors had seen me be brave when my husband was away in Guilin. They knew how I’d cared for my mother-in-law during the epidemic and shown proper filial piety at my in-laws’ funerals. After I survived the winter in the mountains, they’d watched as I’d sent teachers to outlying villages, attended ceremonies in nearly every home in Tongkou, and generally acquitted myself well as the wife of the headman. But on that day, I truly earned the respect that came with being Lady Lu by doing what all women are supposed to do for our country but can rarely accomplish. A woman must set an example of decorum and right thinking in the inside realm. If she is successful, these things will travel from her door to the next, making not only women and children behave properly but inspiring our men to make the outside realm as safe and settled as possible so the emperor can look out from his throne and see peace. I did all that in the most public way possible by showing my neighbors that Snow Flower was a low and base woman who should not be a part of our lives. I had succeeded even as I destroyed my laotong.
My Song of Vituperation became known. It was recorded on handkerchiefs and fans. It was taught to girls as a didactic lesson and sung during the month of wedding festivities to warn brides of life’s pitfalls. In this way, Snow Flower’s disgrace spread throughout the county. As for me, all that had happened crippled me. What was the point of being Lady Lu if I didn’t have love in my life?
Into the Clouds
EIGHT YEARS PASSED. DURING THAT TIME, EMPEROR XIANFENG
died, Emperor Tongzhi assumed power, and the Taiping Rebellion ended somewhere in a distant province. My first son married in and his wife got pregnant, fell into our home, and had a son—the first of many precious grandsons. My son also passed his exams to become a shengyuan district scholar. He immediately began studying to become a xiucai scholar, from the province. He did not have much time for his wife, but I think she found comfort in our upstairs chamber. She was a young woman of good learning and home skills. I liked her very much. My daughter, a girl of sixteen well into her hair-pinning days, was betrothed to the son of a rice merchant in faraway Guilin. I might never see Jade again, but this alliance would further protect our ties to the salt business. The Lu family was wealthy, well respected, and without bad fortune. I was forty-two years old, and I had done my very best to forget about Snow Flower.
On a day late in fall in the fourth year of Emperor Tongzhi’s reign, Yonggang came into the upstairs room and whispered in my ear that someone wanted to see me. I asked her to show the guest upstairs, but Yonggang’s eyes went to my daughter-in-law and daughter, who were embroidering together, and shook her head no. This was either impertinence on Yonggang’s part or something more serious. Without a word to the others, I went downstairs. As I entered the main room, a young girl in worn clothes dropped to her knees and put her forehead to the floor. Beggars like this came to my door often, for I was known to be generous.
“Lady Lu, only you can help me,” the girl implored, as she shuffled her crumpled form toward me until her forehead rested on my lily feet.
I reached down and touched her shoulder. “Give me your bowl and I’ll fill it.”
“I have no beggar’s bowl and I don’t need food.”
“Then why are you here?”
The girl began to weep. I asked her to rise and when she didn’t I tapped her shoulder again. Next to me, Yonggang stared at the floor.
“Get up!” I ordered.
The girl lifted her head and looked up into my face. I would have recognized her anywhere. Snow Flower’s daughter looked exactly like her mother at that age. Her hair fought against the restriction of her pins and fell in loose tendrils about her face, which was as pale and clear as the spring moon she was named for. I wistfully remembered this girl before she was born. Through the mists of memory I saw Spring Moon as a beautiful baby, then during those terrible days and nights of our Taiping winter. Once this pretty little thing would have been my daughter’s laotong. Now here she was, her forehead dropping back to my feet, begging for my help.
“My mother is very sick. She will not last the winter. We can do nothing for her now except settle her fretful mind. Please come to her. She calls out to you. Only you can answer.”
Ev
en five years earlier the depth of my pain would have still been so great that I might have sent the girl on her way, but I had learned a lot in my duties as Lady Lu. I could never forgive Snow Flower for all the sadness she had caused me, but for my own position in the county I had to show my face as a gracious lady. I told Spring Moon to go home and promised that I would arrive there shortly; then I arranged for a palanquin to take me to Jintian. Riding there, I buttressed myself against seeing Snow Flower and the butcher, their son, who I realized must have married in by now, and, of course, the sworn sisters.
The palanquin set me down before Snow Flower’s threshold. The place had not changed. A pile of wood rested against the side of the house. The platform with its embedded wok waited for fresh kill. I hesitated, taking it all in. The butcher’s form loomed in the dark doorway, and then he was before me—older, stringier, but the same in so many ways.
“I cannot bear to see her suffer” were the first words he spoke to me after eight years. He roughly wiped the dampness at his eyes with the back of his hand. “She gave me a son, who has helped me do better at my business. She gave me a good and useful daughter. She made my house more beautiful. She cared for my mother until she died. She did everything a wife should do, but I was cruel to her, Lady Lu. I see that now.” Then he brushed past me, adding, “She is better off in the company of women.” I watched him stalk toward the fields, the one place where a man can be alone with his emotions.
It is hard for me to think about this even after all these years. I thought I had erased Snow Flower from my memory and cut her from my heart. I had truly believed I would never forgive her for loving sworn sisters more than me, but the moment I saw Snow Flower on her bed, all those thoughts and emotions fell away. Time—life—had brutalized her. I stood there, an older woman, true, but my skin was still smooth from creams, powders, and nearly a decade protected from the sun, while my clothes spoke to the whole county about the person I was. In the bed across the room lay Snow Flower, an aged crone dressed in rags. Unlike her daughter, whose face had been immediately familiar to me, I would not have recognized Snow Flower if I had seen her on the street outside the Temple of Gupo.