by Lisa See
Our first and best opportunity to meet to share our aspirations and expectations arrived with the Tasting Festival on the sixth day of the sixth month. After five years of living with the Lus, I knew my mother-in-law had not reversed her position on Snow Flower. I suspected that she was aware that we saw each other during festivals, but so long as I didn’t flaunt the relationship and kept up with my household duties, my mother-in-law left the subject alone.
As it had always been, Snow Flower and I found pleasure in the upstairs chamber of my natal home, but our old intimacy couldn’t be shown, not when we had our children in our bed or in cots around us. Still, we whispered together. I confessed to her that I longed for a daughter who would be my companion. Snow Flower smoothed her hands over her belly and in a small voice reminded me that girls were but worthless branches unable to carry on their fathers’ lines.
“They will not be useless to us,” I said. “Could we not make a laotong match for them now—before they are born?”
“Lily, we are worthless.” Snow Flower sat up. I could see her face in the moonlight. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Women are the mothers of sons,” I corrected her. This had secured my place in my husband’s home. Surely Snow Flower’s son had secured her place too.
“I know. The mothers of sons . . . but—”
“So our daughters will be our companions.”
“I’ve already lost two—”
“Snow Flower, don’t you want our daughters to be old sames?” The thought that she might not crushed against my skull.
She looked at me with a sad smile. “Of course, if we have daughters. They could carry our love for each other even after we go to the afterworld.”
“Good, that’s settled. Now, lie down beside me. Smooth your brow. This is a happy moment. Let us be happy together.”
We returned to Puwei with newborn daughters the following spring. Their birthdays did not match. Their birth months did not match. We peeled away their swaddling and held their feet sole to sole. Even as infants, their foot size did not match. I may have looked at my daughter, Jade, with mother eyes, but even I could see that Snow Flower’s daughter, Spring Moon, was beautiful in comparison to mine. Jade’s skin was too dark for the Lu family, while Spring Moon’s complexion was like the flesh of a white peach. I hoped Jade would be as strong as the stone she was named for and wished that Spring Moon would be heartier than my cousin, whom Snow Flower had honored in her daughter’s name. None of the eight characters corresponded, but we didn’t care. These girls would be old sames.
We opened our fan and looked at our lives together. So much happiness had been recorded there. Our match. Our marriages. The births of our sons. The births of our daughters. Their future match. “One day two girls will meet and become laotong,” I wrote. “They will be as two mandarin ducks. Another pair—their hearts glad—will sit together on a bridge and watch them soar.” Above the garland at the top, Snow Flower painted two small sets of wings flying toward the moon. Two other birds, nesting side by side, looked up.
When we were done, we sat together, cradling our daughters. I felt so much joy, yet I didn’t stop to consider that by ignoring the rules governing the match of two girls, we were breaking a taboo.
TWO YEARS LATER,
Snow Flower sent me a letter announcing that she had finally given birth to a second son. She was jubilant and I was elated, believing that her status would rise in her husband’s home. But we hardly had time to rejoice, because just three days later our country received sad news. Emperor Daoguang had gone to the afterworld. Our county was plunged into mourning, even as his son, Xianfeng, became the new emperor.
I had learned, from Snow Flower’s family’s bitter experience, that when an emperor dies his court falls out of favor so that with every imperial transition come disorder and disharmony, not just in the palace but across the country. At dinner when my father-in-law, my husband, and his brothers discussed what was happening outside of Tongkou, I absorbed only what I could not ignore. Rebels were causing trouble somewhere and landowners were pressing for higher rents from their tenant farmers. I felt for people—like those in my natal family—who would suffer, but truly these things seemed far removed from the comforts of the Lu household.
Then Uncle Lu lost his position and returned to Tongkou. When he stepped out of his palanquin, we all kowtowed, putting our heads to the ground. When he told us to rise, I saw an old man dressed in silk robes. He had two moles on his face. All people cherish the hair on their moles, but Uncle Lu’s were splendid. He had at least ten hairs—coarse in texture, white in color, and a good three centimeters long—sprouting from each mole. As I got to know him, I saw that he loved to play with those hairs, pulling them slightly to encourage them to grow even more.
His clever eyes looked from face to face before settling on my first son. My boy had lived eight years now. Uncle Lu, who should have greeted his brother first, reached out a veined hand and laid it on my son’s shoulder. “Read a thousand books,” he said, in a voice resonant with education yet twisted by many years in the capital, “and your words will flow like a river. Now, little one, show me the way home.” With that, the most esteemed man in the family took the hand of my son, and together they passed through the village gate.
ANOTHER TWO YEARS
passed. I had recently given birth to a third son, and we were all working hard to keep things as they’d been, but anyone could see that between Uncle Lu’s loss of favor and the rebellion against the rent increase, life was not the same. My father-in-law began to cut back on his tobacco and my husband spent longer days in the fields, sometimes even picking up tools himself and joining our farmers in their labors. The tutor left and Uncle Lu took over my eldest son’s lessons. And in the upstairs chamber, the bickering between the wives and concubines increased as the usual gifts of silk cloth and embroidery thread diminished.
When Snow Flower and I met at my natal home that year, I barely spent any time with my family. Oh, we had our meals together and sat outside at night as we had when I was a girl, but Mama and Baba weren’t the reason I visited. I wanted to see and be with Snow Flower. We had turned thirty and had been laotong for twenty-three years. It was hard to believe that so much time had gone by and harder still to believe that once she and I had been heart-to-heart close. I loved Snow Flower as my laotong, but my days were filled with children and chores. I was now the mother of three sons and a daughter, while she had two sons and a daughter. We had an emotional relationship that we believed would never be broken and was deeper than the binds we had with our husbands, but the passion of our love had faded. We didn’t worry about this, since all deep-heart relationships must endure the practical realities of rice-and-salt days. We knew that when we reached our days of sitting quietly we would once again be together in the old way. For now, all we could do was share as much of our daily lives as possible.
In Snow Flower’s household, the last of her sisters-in-law had married out, eliminating the chores she had once needed to do for them. Her father-in-law had also died. A pig he was slaughtering had twisted so strongly at the final moment that the knife slipped in his hand and sliced his arm down to the bone; he bled to death on the family’s threshold as so many pigs had done. Now Snow Flower’s husband was the master, though he—and everyone who lived under that roof—was still very much under the control of his mother. Knowing Snow Flower had nothing and no one, her mother-in-law stepped up her needling, while her husband lowered his protection of her against it. Still, Snow Flower found joy in her second son, who had already grown from a baby into a robust toddler. Everyone loved this child, believing that the first son would not make his tenth birthday, let alone age twenty.
Although Snow Flower’s circumstances were not as high as my own, she paid attention and listened far more deeply than I did. I should have expected this. She had always been more interested in the outer realm than I. She explained that the rebels I’d heard about were called Taiping
s and that they sought a harmonious order. They believed—as do the Yao people—that ghosts, gods, and goddesses have an influence on crops, health, and the birth of sons. The Taipings forbade wine, opium, gambling, dancing, and tobacco. They said property should be taken away from the landlords, who owned 90 percent of the land and received up to 70 percent of the crop, and that those who worked on the land should share equally. In our province, hundreds of thousands of people had left their homes to join the Taipings and were taking over villages and cities. She talked about their leader, who believed he was the son of a famous god, about something he called his Heavenly Kingdom, about his abhorrence of foreigners and political corruption. I did not comprehend what Snow Flower was trying to tell me. To me, a foreigner was someone from another county. I lived within the four walls of my upstairs chamber, but Snow Flower had a mind that flew to faraway places, looking, seeking, wondering.
When I returned home and asked my husband about the Taipings, he answered, “A wife should worry about her children and making her family happy. If your natal family disquiets you so, next time I will not give you permission to visit.”
I did not say another word about the outer realm.
A LACK OF
rain and what that did to the crops made everyone in Tongkou hungry—from the lowest fourth daughter of a farmer to the revered Uncle Lu—yet I still didn’t concern myself until I saw our storeroom begin to empty. Soon my mother-in-law disciplined us over spilled tea or too large a fire in the brazier. My father-in-law refrained from taking much meat from the central dish, preferring that his grandsons eat this precious resource first. Uncle Lu, who had lived in the palace, did not complain as he might have, but as the truth of his circumstances sank in, he became more demanding of my son, hoping that this small boy would be the family’s passage back to better circumstances.
This challenged my husband. At night when we were in bed and the lamps turned low, he confided in me. “Uncle Lu sees something in our son, and I was happy when he took over the boy’s lessons. But now I look ahead and see we might have to send him away to pursue his studies. How can we do that when the whole county knows we will soon have to sell fields if we are to eat?” In the darkness, my husband took my hand. “Lily, I have an idea and my father thinks it is a good one, but I worry about you and our sons.”
I waited, afraid of what he would say next.
“People need certain things to live,” he continued. “Air, sun, water, and firewood are free, if not always abundant. But salt is not free, and everyone needs salt to live.”
My hand tightened around his. Where was this leading?
“I have asked my father if I can take the last of our savings,” he said, “travel to Guilin, buy salt, and bring it back here to sell. He has granted me permission.”
There were more dangers than I could name. Guilin was in the next province. To get there, my husband would have to pass through territory occupied by the rebels. Those who weren’t rebels were desperate farmers who’d lost their homes and had turned into bandits who stole from those who dared travel the roads. The salt business itself was perilous, which was one reason it was always in such short supply. Men who controlled salt in our province had their own armies, but my husband was just one man. He had no experience dealing with either warlords or wily merchants. If all this were not enough, my female mind imagined my husband encountering many beautiful women in Guilin. If he were successful in his venture, he might bring one or more of them home as concubines. My weakness as a woman came out of my mouth first.
“Don’t pluck at wildflowers,” I begged, using the euphemism for the types of women he might meet.
“A wife’s value is in her virtues, not her face,” he reassured me. “You have given me sons. My body will travel a great distance, but my eyes will not look at what they shouldn’t see.” He paused, then added, “Remain faithful, avoid temptation, obey my mother, and serve our sons.”
“I would do no less,” I promised. “But I don’t worry about myself.”
I tried to tell him of my other concerns, but he responded, “Do we stop living because a few people are unhappy? We must continue to use our roads and rivers. They belong to all Chinese people.”
He said he might be gone for a year.
FROM THE MOMENT
my husband left, I worried. As the months wore on, I grew increasingly anxious and frightened. If something happened to him, what would become of me? As a widow, I would have very few options. Since my children were too young to take care of me, my father-in-law could sell me away to another man. Knowing that under those circumstances I might never see my children again, I understood why so many widows killed themselves. But crying day and night about the possibilities was no way for me to go. I tried to maintain a serene facade in the upstairs chamber, even as I agonized over my husband’s safety.
Longing to be comforted by the sight of my first son, I did something I had not done before. I volunteered many times a day to fetch tea for the women in the upstairs chamber; then, once downstairs, I sat quietly within earshot of his lessons with Uncle Lu.
“The three most important powers are Heaven, Earth, and Man,” my son recited. “The three luminaries are the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. Opportunities given by Heaven are not equal to the advantages afforded by Earth, while the advantages of Earth do not match the blessings that come from harmony among men.”
“Any boy can memorize the words, but what do they mean?” Uncle Lu was strident in his correctness.
Do you think my son could give a wrong answer? No, and I’ll tell you why. If he didn’t answer a question correctly or made a mistake in his recitations, Uncle Lu gave him a whack on his open palm with a bamboo slat. If he got it wrong the next day, twice the punishment.
“Heaven gives Man weather, but without the fertile soil of the Earth, it is worthless,” my son answered. “And rich soil is useless without harmony among men.”
From my shadowed corner I beamed with pride, but Uncle Lu did not conclude the lesson because of one right answer.
“Very good. Now let’s talk about empire. If you strengthen the family and follow the rules that are written in the Book of Rites, then order will be found in a household. This spreads from one household to the next, building the security of the state until you reach the emperor. But one rebel begets another rebel and soon there is disorder. Little one, pay attention. Our family owns land. Your grandfather ruled over it while I was gone, but now the people know I no longer have court connections. They see and hear the rebels. We must be very, very careful.”
But the terror he was so afraid of did not arrive in the form of the Taipings. The last thing I heard before the death spirits descended on us was that Snow Flower was pregnant again. I embroidered her a handkerchief wishing her health and happiness in the coming months, then decorated it with silvery fish jumping from a pale-blue stream, believing that this was the most benign—and cool—image I could create for one who would be pregnant during summer.
THAT YEAR THE
big heat came early. It was too soon to go back to our natal homes, so we women and children languished in our upstairs chambers, waiting, waiting, waiting. When the temperature continued to go up, the men in Tongkou and in the villages around us took the children to the river to wade and swim. This was the same river where I had cooled my feet as a girl, so I was delighted when my father-in-law and my brothers-in-law offered to treat the children in this way. But it was also the same river where the big-footed girls did the washing and—as the village wells soured with insect larvae—hauled water for drinking and cooking.
The first case of typhoid struck in the best village in the county—my Tongkou. It fell upon the precious first son of one of our tenant farmers, then swept through that household, killing everyone. The disease arrived as a fever, followed by a severe headache, then sickness in the stomach. Sometimes a hoarse cough came next, or a rash of rose-colored spots. But once the diarrhea hit, it was only a matter of hours
before death brought a merciful end. As soon as we heard a child had taken ill, we knew what would happen next. First the child died, then the other brothers and sisters, then the mother, then the father. It was a pattern that we heard again and again, for a mother cannot turn away from a sick child and a husband cannot abandon a dying wife. Soon every village in the county had cases.
The Lu family retreated from village life and shut its doors. The servants disappeared, perhaps sent away by my father-in-law, perhaps running away out of fear. To this day, I still don’t know. The women in our household gathered the children into our upstairs chamber, believing we would be safest there. Third Sister-in-law’s infant son was the first to show symptoms. His forehead became dry and hot. His cheeks flushed a deep pink. I saw this and took my children to my sleeping chamber. I called for my eldest son. Without my husband here, I should have surrendered to his desire to stay with his great uncle and the rest of the men, but I did not give him a choice.
“Only I will leave this room,” I told my children. “Elder Brother is in charge of you when I am not here. You are to obey him in all ways.”
Each day during that dreadful season, I left the room once in the morning and once at night. Knowing the way that this disease discharged itself from the people it attacked, I carried out the chamber pot and dumped it myself, being careful that nothing from the night soil storage area touched my hands, my feet, my clothes, or our pot. I drew brackish water from the well, boiled it, and then strained it so it was as clear and clean as possible. I was afraid of food, but we had to eat. I didn’t know what to do. Should we eat food raw, straight from the garden? But when I thought about the night soil we used in our fields and how the sickness had poured from so many bodies, I knew that couldn’t be right. I remembered back to the one thing my mother always cooked when I was sick—congee. I made it twice a day.