by Lisa See
“These are difficult times,” Mama said sternly to the crying pair. “Our footbinding helps us to be softer, more languid, smaller.” She paused again, and then added, in a kinder but no less adamant tone, “I will show you how this is done. I expect you to do this for your daughter four days from now. Every four days, tighter and tighter. Give your daughter the gift of your mother love. Do you understand?”
Second Aunt’s tears dripped from her cheeks into her daughter’s hair. All of us in the room knew that in four days Second Aunt would be no stronger than she was now and a variation of this scene would be repeated.
Mama turned her attention back to me. “Come sit beside me.” Once we were eye to eye, she gave me a lovely mother smile. “These will be the last set of feet to be bound in our household before your marriage. I want you to go to your husband’s home with the proper skills to bind your own daughter’s feet one day.”
The other little girls looked at me in admiration, hoping their mothers would do this for them too.
“Unfortunately,” Mama said, “we first have to fix what has been neglected here.” She then forgave Second Aunt by gently adding, “All mothers are cowardly when it comes to this job. There were times when I was as feeble as you. It’s tempting not to wrap the bindings tight enough. But then what happens? The child walks and the bones begin to move within their bindings. Don’t you see, Second Aunt, that while you think you’re doing your daughter a favor, you’re only prolonging her ordeal and worsening her pain? You must remember that a plain face is given by Heaven, but poorly bound feet are a sign of laziness, not only of the mother but of the daughter as well. What kind of message does this send to prospective in-laws? Girls should be as delicate as flowers. It is important that they walk elegantly, sway gracefully, and show their respectability. In this way girls become precious gems.”
Mama’s voice hardened again as she spoke to me.
“We have to be strong and correct mistakes when they occur. Now take your cousin’s ankle with your left hand.”
I did as I was told.
Mama folded her hand over my own and squeezed. “You’re going to have to hold on very tight, because…” She glanced up at Orchid and decided not to finish her sentence. “Peony,” she continued, “we don’t do washing, but surely you’ve seen Willow or one of the other servants wash your clothes or linens.”
I nodded.
“Good, so you know that when they’re done rinsing they wring the clothes as tightly as possible to get out all the remaining water. We’re going to do something like that. Please follow exactly what I do.”
The written character for mother love is composed of two elements: love and pain. I had always thought this emotion was felt by daughters for their mothers, who inflict pain on us by binding our feet, but looking at Second Aunt’s tears and my mother’s courage I realized this emotion was for them. A mother suffers deeply to give birth, bind feet, and say goodbye to a daughter when she marries out. I wanted to be able to show my daughters how much I loved them, but I felt sick to my stomach—in sympathy for my little cousin and in fear that I would fail in some way.
“Mother”—Mama addressed her sister-in-law—“hold your daughter firmly.” She looked at me, gave me a nod of encouragement, and said, “Put one hand around the foot so that it meets your other hand…as though you were about to wring clothes.”
The pressure on Orchid’s broken bones caused her to squirm. Second Aunt wrapped her arms even more tightly around her daughter.
“I wish we could do this quickly,” Mama went on, “but haste and a soft heart are what caused this problem in the first place.”
She kept her grip on the ankle with her left hand, while her right slowly pulled away toward the toes. My cousin began to scream.
I felt light-headed but exuberant too. Mama was showing me much mother love.
I followed her movement and my cousin’s screams intensified.
“Good,” Mama said. “Feel the bones straighten beneath your fingers. Let them fall into place as they squeeze through your hand.”
I came to the toes and let go. Orchid’s feet were still horribly misshapen. But instead of strange bumps poking against the flesh, the feet looked like two long chilies. Above me, Orchid’s body heaved with sobs as she tried to catch her breath.
“This next part will be painful,” Mama observed. She looked to one of the cousins standing to her right, and said, “Go and find Shao. Where is she anyway? No matter. Just bring her. And quickly!”
The girl returned with my old wet nurse. She had once been part of a good family, but she came to work for us when she became a widow at an early age. The older I’d grown, the less I liked her, because she was so strict and unforgiving.
“Hold the child’s legs in place,” Mama ordered. “I don’t want to see any movement from the knees down, except what comes from either my daughter’s hands or my own. Understood?”
Shao had been through this many times and knew what needed to be done.
Mama glanced around at the cluster of girls. “Step back. Give us some room.”
Although those girls were as curious as mice, Mama was the head woman in our household and they did as they were told.
“Peony, think of your own feet when you do this. You know how the toes are tucked under and how your mid-foot is folded in on itself? We accomplish this by rolling the bones under the foot as if you were rolling a sock. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“Mother,” Mama asked Second Aunt, “are you ready?”
Second Aunt, who was known for her pale skin, appeared almost translucent, as though her soul was barely in her body.
To me, Mama said, “Once again, just follow me.”
And I did. I rolled the bones under, concentrating so hard that I barely noticed my cousin’s shrieks. Shao’s knobby hands held the legs with such strength that her knuckles went white. In her agony, Orchid vomited. The putrid mess shot from her mouth and spattered my mother’s tunic, skirt, and face. Second Aunt apologized profusely, and I heard the bitter shame in her voice. Wave after wave of nausea washed over me, but Mama didn’t flinch or waver for one moment in her task.
Finally, we were done. Mama looked at my work and patted my cheek. “You did an excellent job. This may be your special gift. You will make a fine wife and mother.”
Never had my mother offered such approval for anything I’d done.
Mama wrapped the foot she’d worked on first. She did what Second Aunt couldn’t do; she made the bindings very tight. Orchid was beyond tears by now, so the only sounds were my mother’s voice and the soft swish of the cloth as she passed it up and over and under the foot, again and again, until all three meters had been used on the one tiny foot.
“More girls are having their feet bound than ever before in the history of our country,” Mama explained. “The Manchu barbarians believe our women’s practice to be backward! They see our husbands and we worry for them, but the Manchus can’t see us in our women’s chambers. We wrap our daughters’ feet as an act of rebellion against those foreigners. Look around; even our maids, servants, and slaves have bound feet. Even the old, the poor, and the frail have bound feet. We have our women’s ways. This is what makes us valuable. It’s what makes us marriageable. And they cannot make us stop!”
Mama sewed the bindings shut, set the foot on a cushion, and began working on the foot I’d reshaped. When she finished, she set this foot on the cushion as well. She batted her sister-in-law’s comforting fingers away from Orchid’s still-wet cheeks and added a few final thoughts.
“Through our footbinding we have won in two ways. We weak women have beaten the Manchus. Their policy failed so badly that now the Manchu women try to emulate us. If you went outside, you would see them with their big ugly shoes with tiny platforms built in the shape of bound-foot slippers tacked under the soles to give them the illusion of bound feet. Ha! They cannot compete with us or stop us from cherishing our culture. More importa
ntly, our bound feet continue to be an enticement to our husbands. Remember, a good husband is one who brings you pleasure too.”
With the sensations I’d had in my body since meeting my stranger, I felt I knew what she was talking about. Strangely, though, I’d never seen my mother and father touch. Did this come from my father or my mother? My father had always been affectionate with me. He hugged me and kissed me whenever we saw each other in the corridors or I visited him in his library. The physical distance between my parents had to come from some lack in my mother. Had she gone to her marriage with the same apprehension I would now take to mine? Was this why my father had concubines?
Mama stood up and pulled her wet skirt away from her legs. “I’m going to change. Peony, please go ahead to the Spring Pavilion. Second Aunt, leave your daughter here and go with Peony. We have guests. I’m sure they’re waiting for us. Ask them to start breakfast without me.” To Shao, she added, “I’ll send congee for the child. Make sure she eats it, and then give her some herbs to ease the pain. She may rest today. I’m counting on you to let me know what transpires four days from now. We can’t allow this to happen again. It’s unfair to the child and it frightens the younger girls.”
After she left, I stood up. For a moment, the room went dark. My head finally cleared, but my stomach was far from calm.
“Take your time, Auntie,” I managed to say. “I’ll meet you in the corridor when you’re ready.”
I hurried back to my room, shut the door, lifted the lid off the half-full chamber pot, and threw up. Fortunately, Willow was not there to see me, because I don’t know how I would have explained myself. Then I got up, rinsed my mouth, walked back down the corridor, and arrived just as Second Aunt emerged from the girls’ hall.
I’d finally done something that made my mother truly proud, but it had also made me sick. For all my desire to be strong like Liniang, I was softhearted like my aunt. I wouldn’t be able to show my mother love to my daughter. I’d be a disaster when it came to binding her feet. I hoped that Mama would never know. My mother-in-law might not let the news of my failure pass beyond the Wu family gates, just as Mama wouldn’t let anyone know of Second Aunt’s continued weakness. This fell under the admonition of never doing anything that would allow the family to lose face, and the Wus—if they were good and kind—would do their part by keeping the secret within the four walls of their home.
I expected hushed tones when Second Aunt and I entered the Spring Pavilion, for surely every woman in the villa had heard Orchid’s screams, but Third Aunt had taken the opportunity to play at being head woman. Dishes had been set out and the women were busily eating and gossiping as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the morning of Double Seven in the Chen Family Villa.
I forgot to harden myself against my cousins’ predictable biting comments that came over breakfast, but oddly their words fell away from me like the old skin that Willow had washed from my feet. I couldn’t eat, however, not even the special dumplings that Mama had Cook prepare for my birthday. How could I put food in my mouth and swallow it when my stomach was still so unsettled—from the binding, from my secret happiness, and from my worries about being caught tonight?
After breakfast, I went back to my room. Later, when I heard the soft padding of lily feet as the others left their rooms and headed for the Lotus-Blooming Hall, I wrapped one of my paintings in a piece of silk for today’s contest, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the corridor.
When I got to the Lotus-Blooming Hall, I sought my mother’s side. Her warm feelings from earlier seemed to have evaporated, but I didn’t worry. She would be exceptionally busy today between the guests, the contests, and the celebration, I thought, as she walked away from me.
We started with an art contest. If I was sloppy at embroidery and awkward at the zither, I was even worse when it came to painting. The contest’s first category was peonies. Once it seemed all the paintings had been displayed, expectant eyes turned to me.
“Peony, where is your peony?” one of our guests asked.
“It’s her name,” Third Aunt confided to the others, “but she never practices her petal work.”
This contest was followed by one for chrysanthemums, another for plum blossoms, and finally for orchids. I surreptitiously laid my painting on the table. My orchids were too heavy and another girl won the competition. Next came paintings with butterflies, and finally butterflies and flowers together. I didn’t enter either of those categories.
Always the same flowers and butterflies, I thought to myself. But what else could we paint? Our paintings were about what we could see in the garden: butterflies and flowers. Standing there, looking at the beautifully powdered faces of my aunts, cousins, and our female guests, I saw wistful longing. But if I was looking at them, they were observing me too. My mooning did not escape the notice of the other women, who were all trained to spot weakness and vulnerability.
“Your Peony seems to have been overcome by spring sickness in summer,” Fourth Aunt remarked.
“Yes, we have all noticed the heightened color on her cheeks,” Third Aunt added. “What could be on her mind?”
“Tomorrow I will pick herbs and brew a tea to ease her spring sickness,” Fourth Aunt offered helpfully.
“Spring sickness in summer?” my mother echoed. “Peony is too practical.”
“We like to see your daughter this way,” Second Aunt said. “Perhaps she will confide her secrets to the other girls. They all wish to have romantic thoughts too. Every girl should look this pretty on her sixteenth birthday. Five more months to her marriage. I think we can all agree she is ready to be plucked.”
I tried as hard as possible to make my face as unfathomable as a pond on a humid summer night. I failed, and some of the older women tittered at my girlish embarrassment.
“Then it’s a good thing she’s marrying soon,” my mother agreed, in a deceptively light tone. “But you’re right, Second Aunt, maybe she should speak to your daughter. I’m sure that Broom’s husband would be grateful for any improvement on their wedding night.” She clapped her hands softly. “Now come, let us go to the garden for our final contests.”
As the other women filed out, I felt my mother’s eyes on me—weighing and considering what had been said. She didn’t speak and I refused to meet her eyes. We were like two stone statues in that room. I was grateful she’d protected me, but to say that would be to admit…what? That I was lovesick? That I’d met someone in the Riding-the-Wind Pavilion the last two nights? That I planned to meet him tonight in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion, a place on our property I was not allowed to go? Suddenly I realized I’d changed in a fundamental way. Monthly bleeding doesn’t turn a girl into a woman, nor does betrothal or new skills. Love had turned me into a woman.
I called upon my grandmother’s poise and dignity, and without saying a word I lifted my head and walked out the door and into the garden.
I sat on a porcelain jardinière. The garden looked very pretty, and much of the inspiration for this last round of contests would come—as usual—from what we could see. My cousins and aunts offered bits of poetry from famous women poets that invoked the plum blossom, chrysanthemum, orchid, and peony. So many lovely words for such beautiful and evocative flowers, but I scrolled through my memory until I came to a dark poem that had been written on a wall in Yangzhou by an unknown woman during the Cataclysm. I waited until the others had recited their poems and then I began to speak in what I imagined to be the sorrowful voice of that desperate writer:
“The trees are bare.
In the distance, the honks of mourning geese.
If only my tears of blood could dye red the blossoms of the plum tree.
But I will never make it to spring.
My heart is empty and my life has no value anymore.
Each moment a thousand tears.”
This poem—considered one of the saddest of the Cataclysm—reached deep into everyone’s hearts. Second Aunt, still upset over her
daughter’s footbinding, once again shed tears, but she wasn’t the only one. Great feelings of qing filled the garden. We shared in the despair of that lost and presumably dead woman.
Then I felt my mother’s eyes piercing me. All color had drained from her face, making her rouge stand out like bruises on her cheeks. Her voice was barely audible as she said, “On this beautiful day my daughter brings misery into our midst.”
I didn’t know why Mama was upset.
“My daughter isn’t feeling well,” Mama confided to the mothers around her, “and I’m afraid she’s forgotten what’s proper.” She looked back at me. “You should spend the rest of the day and evening in bed.”
Mama had control over me, but was she really going to keep me from the opera because I recited an unhappy poem? Tears gathered in my eyes. I blinked them back.
“I’m not sick,” I said, rather pathetically.
“That is not what Willow tells me.”
I flushed with anger and disappointment. When she’d emptied the chamber pot, Willow must have seen that I’d thrown up and told my mother. Now my mother knew I’d failed—once again—as a soon-to-be wife and mother. But this knowledge didn’t chasten me. It made me very determined. I wouldn’t let her keep me from my meeting in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion. I brought a forefinger to my cheekbone, inclined my head, and drew my features into the prettiest, blankest, most harmless picture of a Hangzhou maiden.
“Oh, Mama, I think it is as my aunties have said. On the day we honor the Weaving Maid I have let my mind drift to the celestial bridge that will be formed tonight for the two lovers to meet. I may have had a momentary case of spring feelings, but I don’t have spring fever, aches of any sort, or any womanly complaints. My lapse is only an indicator of my maiden status, nothing more.”
I appeared so innocent, and the other women looked at me with such benevolence, that my mother would have had a hard time sending me away.