And yes, the other women were there—Lotus, Willow, and Plum Blossom. As I suspected all those years ago, Snow Flower’s sworn sisters were the women who’d lived with us under the tree in the mountains. We did not exchange greetings.
As I approached the bed, Spring Moon rose and stepped aside. Snow Flower’s eyes were closed and her skin was deathly pale. I looked at her daughter, unsure of what to do. The girl nodded and I took Snow Flower’s cold hand in my own. She stirred without opening her eyes, then licked her cracked lips.
“I feel . . .” She shook her head as though trying to rid her mind of a thought.
I called her name softly, then gently squeezed her fingers.
My laotong’s eyes blinked open and she tried to focus, at first not believing who was before her. “I felt your touch,” she murmured at last. “I knew it was you.” Her voice was weak, but when she spoke, the years of pain and horror fell away. Behind the ravages of disease, I saw and heard the little girl who invited me to become her laotong all those years ago.
“I heard you call for me,” I lied. “I came as fast as I could.”
“I was waiting.”
Her face contorted in anguish. Her other hand clutched her stomach and she pulled up her legs reflexively. Snow Flower’s daughter wordlessly dipped a cloth into a bowl of water, wrung it out, and handed it to me. I took it and wiped away the sweat that had collected on Snow Flower’s forehead during the spasm.
Through her agony she spoke. “I’m sorry for everything, but you should know I never wavered in my love for you.”
As I accepted her apology, another spasm hit, this one worse than the first. Her eyes shut against the pain, and she did not speak again. I refreshed the cloth and put it back on her forehead; then I once again took her hand and sat with her until the sun went down. By that time, the other women had left and Spring Moon had gone downstairs to make dinner. Alone with Snow Flower, I pulled back her quilt. Her disease had eaten the flesh around her bones and fed it to a tumor that had grown to the size of a baby inside her belly.
Even now I can’t explain my emotions. I had been hurt and angry for so long. I thought I would never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled with the realization that my laotong’s womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor inside her must have been growing for many years. I had a duty to care. . . .
No! That’s not it. The whole time I was hurt it was because I still loved Snow Flower. She was the only one ever who saw my weaknesses and loved me in spite of them. And I had loved her even when I hated her most.
I tucked the quilt back around her and began plotting. I had to get a proper doctor. Snow Flower should eat, and we needed a diviner. I wanted her to fight as I would fight. You see, I still didn’t understand that you cannot control the manifestations of love, nor can you change another person’s destiny.
I lifted Snow Flower’s cold hand to my lips; then I went downstairs. The butcher slouched at the table. Snow Flower’s son, a grown man now, stood next to his sister. They looked at me with expressions that came directly from their mother—proud, enduring, long-suffering, beseeching.
“I’m going home now,” I announced. Snow Flower’s son’s face crumpled in disappointment, but I held up my hand placatingly. “I will be back tomorrow. Please arrange a place for me to sleep. I will not leave this place until . . .” I couldn’t go on.
I thought that once I settled in we would win this battle, but two weeks were all we had. Two weeks out of what would turn out to be my eighty years to show Snow Flower all the love I felt for her. Not once did I leave that room. Whatever went into my body, Snow Flower’s daughter brought. Whatever went out of my body, Snow Flower’s daughter took away. Every day I washed Snow Flower, then used the same water to wash myself. A shared bowl of water many years before was how I knew Snow Flower loved me. Now I hoped she would see my actions, remember the past, and know that nothing had changed.
At night, after the others left, I moved from the cot the family had prepared for me and into the bed next to Snow Flower. I wrapped my arms around her, trying to bring warmth to her shriveled form and alleviate the torment that so wracked her body that she whimpered even in her dreams. Each night I fell asleep wishing my hands were sponges that would absorb the growth in her belly. Each morning I woke to find her hand upon my cheek, her hollowed eyes staring at me.
For many years, Jintian’s doctor had attended to Snow Flower. Now I sent for my own. He took one look and shook his head.
“Lady Lu, a cure is not possible,” he said. “All you can do now is wait for the onset of death. You can see it already in the purple tint of her flesh just above her bindings. First, her ankles; then her legs will come next, swelling and turning the skin purple as her life force slows. Soon, I suspect, her breathing will change. You’ll recognize it. An inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Just when you think she is gone she will take another breath. Do not cry, Lady Lu. At that time the end will be very near, and she will not even be aware of her pain.”
The doctor left packets of herbs for us to brew into a medicinal tea; I paid him and vowed I would never use him again. After he left, Lotus, the eldest of the sworn sisters, tried to comfort me. “Snow Flower’s husband brought in many doctors, but one doctor, two doctors, three doctors could do nothing for her now.”
The old fury threatened to rise up in me, but I saw the sympathy and compassion in Lotus’s face, not just for Snow Flower but for me as well.
I remembered that bitter was the most yin of flavors. It caused contractions, reduced fevers, and calmed the heart and spirit. Convinced that bitter melon was something that would stall Snow Flower’s disease, I called upon her sworn sisters to help by making sautéed bitter melon with black bean sauce and bitter melon soup. The three women did as I asked. I sat on Snow Flower’s bed and fed her spoonful after spoonful. At first she ate without arguing. Then she clamped her mouth shut and looked away from me as though I weren’t there.
The middle sworn sister pulled me aside. At the top of the stairs, Willow took the bowl from my hands, and whispered, “It’s too late for this. She doesn’t want to eat. You must try to let her go.” Willow patted my face kindly. Later that day, she would be the one who cleaned up Snow Flower’s bitter-melon vomit.
My next and final plan was to bring in the diviner. He came into the room and announced, “A ghost has attached itself to your friend’s body. Do not worry. Together we will drive it from this room and she will be cured. Miss Snow Flower,” he said, bending over the bed, “here are some words for you to chant.” Then to the rest of us, he ordered, “Kneel and pray.”
So Spring Moon, Madame Wang—yes, the old matchmaker was there through most of it—the three sworn sisters, and I dropped to our knees around the bed and began praying and singing to the Goddess of Mercy, while Snow Flower’s voice weakly repeated her lines. Once the diviner saw us busy with our tasks, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, wrote some incantations on it, set it on fire, and ran back and forth across the room, trying to drive away the hungry ghost. Next he used a sword to slice through the smoke: swish, swish, swish. “Ghost out! Ghost out! Ghost out!”
But this did not help. I paid the diviner and from Snow Flower’s lattice window watched as he got into his pony-drawn cart and trotted off down the road. I vowed that from here on I would use diviners only to find propitious dates.
Plum Blossom, the third and youngest of the sworn sisters, came to stand next to me. “Snow Flower is doing everything you ask of her. But I hope you see, Lady Lu, that she only does these things for you. This torment has gone on too long. If she were a dog, would you keep her suffering so?”
Pain exists at many levels: the physical agony that Snow Flower endured, the sorrow at seeing her suffer and believing that I couldn’t bear another moment, the torturous regret I felt for the things I had said to her eight years ago—and to what purpose? To be respected by the women of my village? To hurt Snow Flower as she had hurt me
? Or had it come down to my pride—that if she wouldn’t be with me, she shouldn’t be with anyone? I’d been wrong on every count, including the last one, because during those long days I saw the solace that the other women brought to Snow Flower. They had not come to her just at this final moment as I had; they had watched over her for many years. Their generosity—in the form of little bags of rice, cut vegetables, and gathered firewood—had kept her alive. Now they came every day, neglecting their duties at home. They did not crowd in on our special relationship. Instead, they hovered like benign spirits, praying, continuing to light fires to scare away ghosts eager for Snow Flower, but always leaving us to ourselves.
I must have slept, but I don’t remember it. When I wasn’t attending to Snow Flower, I was making burial shoes for her. I chose colors I knew she would love. I threaded my needle and embroidered one shoe with a lotus blossom for continual and a ladder for climbing to suggest that Snow Flower was on a continual climb to heaven. On the other, I embroidered tiny deer and curly-winged bats, symbols that meant long life—the same ones that you see on wedding garments and hang as celebratory notices at birthdays—to let Snow Flower know that, even after her death, her blood would continue through her son and her daughter.
Snow Flower deteriorated. When I had first arrived and washed and rewrapped her feet, I saw that her curled toes had already turned dark purple. As the doctor said it would, that horrible death color crept up to her calves. I tried to make Snow Flower fight the disease. In the early days I begged her to call on her horse nature to kick away those spirits who wanted to claim her. Now, I knew, all that was left was to ease her way to the afterworld as best we could.
Yonggang saw all this when she came to see me each morning, bringing fresh eggs, clean clothes, and messages from my husband. She had been obedient and loyal to me for many years, but at this time I discovered that she had once broken faith with me in a way for which I will be forever grateful. Three days before Snow Flower died, Yonggang arrived for one of her early morning visits, knelt before me, and laid a basket at my feet.
“I saw you, Lady, many years ago,” she said, her voice cracking in fear. “I knew you couldn’t mean what you were doing.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about or why she had chosen this moment to confess. Then she pulled the cloth from the top of the basket, reached in, and took out letters, handkerchiefs, embroideries, and Snow Flower and my secret fan. These were things I’d looked for when I was burning our past, but this servant had risked being thrown into the street to save them, during those days of Cutting a Disease from My Heart, and then kept them protected all these years.
Seeing this, Spring Moon and the sworn sisters scurried around the room, digging into Snow Flower’s embroidery basket, rifling through drawers, and reaching under the bed to find secret hiding places. Soon I had before me all the letters I had ever written Snow Flower and everything I had ever made for her. In the end, everything—except what I had once destroyed—was there.
For the last days of Snow Flower’s life, I took us on a journey through our lives together. We had both memorized so much that we could recite whole passages, but she weakened quickly and spent the rest of the time just holding my hand and listening.
At night, in bed together under the lattice window, the moonlight bathing us, we were transported back to our hair-pinning days. I wrote nu shu characters on her palm. The bed is lit by moonlight. . . .
“What did I write?” I asked. “Tell me the characters.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t tell. . . .”
So I recited the poem and watched as tears dripped from the edges of Snow Flower’s eyes, ran down her temples, and lost themselves in her ears.
During the last conversation we had, she asked, “Could you do one thing for me?”
“Anything,” I said, and I meant it.
“Please be an aunt to my children.”
I promised that I would.
Nothing helped or relieved Snow Flower’s suffering. In the final hours, I read her our contract, reminding her how we had gone to the Temple of Gupo and bought the red paper, sat down together, and composed the words. I read again the letters we had sent each other. I read happy parts from our fan. I hummed old melodies from our childhood. I told her how much I loved her and said I hoped she would be waiting for me in the afterworld. I talked her all the way to the edge of the sky, not wanting her to go yet yearning to release her into the clouds.
Snow Flower’s skin went from ghostly white to golden. A lifetime of worries melted from her face. The sworn sisters, Spring Moon, Madame Wang, and I listened to Snow Flower’s breathing: an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Seconds passed; then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. More excruciating seconds, then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. The whole time I kept my hand on Snow Flower’s cheek, as she had done for me throughout our entire lives together, letting her know that her laotong was there until that final inhale, exhale, and then truly nothing.
SO MUCH OF
what happened reminded me of the didactic story that Aunt used to chant about the girl who had three brothers. I now understand that we learned those songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.
Snow Flower was carried down to the main room. I washed her and dressed her in her eternity clothes—all of them ragged and faded, but in patterns I remembered from our childhood. The oldest sworn sister combed Snow Flower’s hair. The middle sworn sister patted Snow Flower’s face with powder and painted her lips. The youngest sworn sister decorated her hair with flowers. Snow Flower’s body was placed in a coffin. A small band came to play mourning music as we sat next to her in the main room. The oldest sworn sister had enough money to buy incense to burn. The middle sworn sister had enough money to buy paper to burn. The youngest sworn sister had no money for incense or paper, but she did a very good job crying.
Three days later, the butcher, his son, and the husbands and sons of the sworn sisters carried the coffin to the grave site. They walked very fast, as if they were flying across the ground. I took almost all of Snow Flower’s nu shu writing, including much of what I had sent her, and burned it so she would have our words in the afterworld.
We returned to the butcher’s house. Spring Moon made tea, while the three sworn sisters and I went upstairs to clean away all signs of death.
It was through them that I learned of my greatest shame. They told me that Snow Flower was not their sworn sister. I didn’t believe it. They tried to convince me otherwise.
“But the fan?” I cried out in frustration. “She wrote that she was joining you.”
“No,” Lotus corrected. “She wrote that she didn’t want you to worry about her anymore, that she had friends here to console her.”
They asked if they could see the words for themselves. Snow Flower, I learned, had taught these women how to read nu shu. Now they crowded over the fan like a gaggle of hens, exclaiming and pointing out to one another hallmarks that Snow Flower had told them about over the years. But when they came to the last entry, they turned serious.
“Look,” Lotus said, pointing to the characters. “There is nothing here about her becoming our sworn sister.”
I snatched the fan away and took it to a corner where I could examine it myself. I have too many troubles, Snow Flower had written. I cannot be what you wish. You won’t have to listen to my complaints anymore. Three sworn sisters have promised to love me as I am—
“You see, Lady Lu?” Lotus said to me from across the room. “Snow Flower wanted us to listen to her. In exchange she taught us the secret language. She was our teacher, and we respected and loved her for that. But she didn’t love us, she loved you. She wanted that love returned, unburdened by your pity and your impatience.”
That I had been shallow, stubborn, and selfish did not alter the gravity and stupidity of what I had done. I had made the greatest mista
ke for a woman literate in nu shu: I had not considered texture, context, and shades of meaning. More than that, my belief in my own self-importance had made me forget what I had learned on the first day I’d met Snow Flower: She was always more subtle and sophisticated in her words than this mere second daughter of a common farmer. For eight years, Snow Flower had suffered because of my blindness and ignorance. For the rest of my life—which has been nearly as many years as Snow Flower was when she died—I have lived with the regret.
But they were not done with me.
“She tried to please you in every way,” Lotus said, “even by doing bed business with her husband too soon after giving birth.”
“That’s not true!”
“Every time she lost a baby, you offered no more sympathy than her husband or mother-in-law,” Willow went on. “You always said that her only worth was from giving birth to sons, and she believed you. You told her to try again, and she obeyed.”
“This is what we are supposed to say,” I answered indignantly. “This is how we women give comfort—”
“But do you think those words were a consolation when she had lost another baby?”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t hear—”
“Try again! Try again! Try again!” Plum Blossom taunted. “Can you deny you said these things?”
I couldn’t.
“You demanded that she follow your advice on this and many other things,” Lotus picked up. “Then when she did, you criticized her—”