Lisa See - Peony in Love

For so long I’d wished to be part of a sisterhood. I hadn’t found it in the women’s chambers with my cousins when I was alive, because they hadn’t liked me. I hadn’t found it on the Viewing Terrace with the other lovesick maidens, because their lovesickness was different from mine. I hadn’t found it with the members of the Banana Garden Five, because they didn’t know I existed. But I had it with my mother and grandmother. Despite our weaknesses and failings, a single thread bound us together: my grandmother, as confused as she was; my mother, as broken as she was; and me, a pathetic hungry ghost. As Mama and I walked on through the night, I understood at last that I was not alone.

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A Daughter’s Fate

we reac h e d g udang ear ly th e ne xt morn i ng and made our way to the house of the headman. I’d done so much roaming by now that these long distances no longer hurt me, but Mama had to sit down and massage her feet. A child squealed and ran barefoot out of the house. It was Qian Yi. Her hair had been tied up in little tufts, giving her an appearance of sparkle and liveliness that went against her thin frame and pale face.

“Is she the one?” Mama asked skeptically.

“Let’s go inside. I want you to see her mother.”

Madame Qian sat in a corner embroidering. Mama examined the stitches, looked at me in wonder, and said, “She’s from our class. Look at her hands. Even in this place they’re soft and white. And her stitches are delicate. How did she end up here?”

“The Cataclysm.”

Mama’s puzzlement turned to worry as she conjured up images of what might have happened. She reached into the folds of her skirts to find the locks she’d always relied on. Finding nothing, she clasped her hands together.

“Consider the girl, Mama,” I said. “Should she suffer too?”

“Maybe she’s paying for a bad deed in a past life,” Mama suggested.

“Maybe this is her fate.”

I frowned. “What if it is her fate for us to interfere on her behalf?”

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Mama looked doubtful. “But what can we do?”

I answered her question with one of my own. “Do you remember when you told me that footbinding was an act of resistance against the Manchus?”

“It was. It still is.”

“But not here. This family needs its big-footed daughters to work. But this girl won’t be able to do that.”

Mama agreed with my assessment. “I’m surprised she’s lived this long.

But how can you help her?”

“I’d like to bind her feet.”

Madame Qian called for her daughter. Yi obeyed and came to stand next to her mother.

“Footbinding alone won’t change her fate,” Mama said.

“If I’m to atone,” I hurried on, “then I can’t choose something easy.”

“Yes, but—”

“Her mother moved down in the Cataclysm. Why can’t Yi move up?”

“Up to what?”

“I don’t know. But even if her destiny is only to be a thin horse, wouldn’t that be better than this? If that’s to be her course, perfectly bound feet will put her into a higher home.”

Mama looked around the sparsely decorated room, then back at Madame Qian and her daughter. When she said, “This isn’t the season for footbinding. It’s too hot,” I knew I’d won.

Putting the idea into Madame Qian’s head was easy, but getting her husband to agree was another matter altogether. He listed his reasons against it: Yi wouldn’t be able to help him raise silkworms (which was true), and no man in the countryside wanted to marry a useless woman with bound feet (which was a pointed insult directed at his wife).

Madame Qian listened patiently, waiting for an opportunity to speak.

When it came, she said, “You seem to forget, Husband, that selling a daughter could bring a small fortune.”

The next day, even as my mother reminded me again that we were in the wrong season, Madame Qian gathered together alum, astringent, binding cloths, scissors, nail clippers, needle, and thread. Mama knelt next to me as I placed my cold hands over Madame Qian’s and helped her wash her daughter’s feet and then put them in a softening bath of herbs. Then we cut Yi’s toenails, daubed the flesh with the astringent, folded the toes under, wrapped the binding cloth up, over, and under the foot, and finally ( 2 2 3 )

sewed the cloth shut so Yi wouldn’t be able to free herself. Mama spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me, praising me. She gave me her mother love and I passed it through my hands into Yi’s feet.

The child didn’t begin to cry until later that night as her feet began to burn from the lost circulation and constant pressure of the bindings. Over the next few weeks, as we tightened the bindings every four days and made Yi walk back and forth to put added pressure on the bones that needed to break, I went forward with grim determination. Nights were the worst, when Yi sobbed, sucking in hiccuped breaths through her agony.

This would be a two-year process, and Yi inspired me with her bravery, inner strength, and persistence. The moment the bindings went on her feet, Yi automatically moved up a class from her father and her siblings.

She could no longer run away from her mother or follow her sisters barefoot through the dusty village. She was an inside girl now. Her mother understood this too. The house had little ventilation, but my ghostliness brought coolness wherever I was, and on the hottest day of summer, when even I couldn’t overcome the oppressive heat and humidity and Yi’s suffering was great but not as great as it would be in a few more weeks, Madame Qian brought out the Book of Songs. The bright white pain in Yi’s mind lessened as her mother recited love poems written by women tens of centuries ago. But after a while, the burning and throbbing in Yi’s feet overpowered her again.

Madame Qian got up from the bed, swayed to the window on her golden lilies, and stared out over the fields for several minutes. She bit her upper lip and gripped the windowsill. Did she have the same thoughts as I, that this was a terrible mistake? That she was causing her daughter too much pain?

Mama came to my side. “Doubt comes to all mothers,” she said. “But remember, this is the one thing a mother can do to give her daughter a better life.”

Madame Qian’s fingers loosened on the windowsill. She blinked back her tears, took a deep breath, and returned to the bed. She opened the book again.

“With your feet bound, you’re no longer like your sisters,” she said,

“but there’s an even more important gift I can give you. Today, little one, you will begin to learn to read.”

As Madame Qian pointed out certain characters, explaining their origins and their meanings, Yi forgot her feet. Her body relaxed and the blinding whiteness of pain dulled. At six, Yi was old to start a proper edu-

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cation, but I was there to redeem myself, and reading and writing were things I knew very well. With my help, she would catch up.

A few days later, after seeing Yi’s curiosity and aptitude, Mama announced, “I think the child’s going to need a dowry. I’ll be able to help with that once I’m settled.”

With our energies so focused on Qian Yi, I’d stopped paying attention to the passage of time. Mama’s forty-nine days of roaming had come to an end.

“I wish we had more time,” I said. “I wish it had always been like this.

I wish—”

“No more regrets, Peony. Promise me that.” Mama hugged me and then held me away from her so she could look me straight in the face.

“Soon you’ll go home too.”