Lisa See - Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

“Nothing has changed,” I said. “We are old sames.”

She took my hand, helped me up the final step, and led me into the women’s chamber. I could see that it too had been lovely at one time. It was perhaps three times the size of the women’s chamber in my natal home. Instead of vertical bars on the lattice window, an intricately carved wooden screen covered the opening. Otherwise, the room was empty but for a spinning wheel and a bed. The beautiful woman I had seen downstairs, her hands folded neatly in her lap, perched gracefully on the edge of the bed. Her peasant clothes couldn’t disguise her breeding.

“Lily,” Snow Flower said, “this is my mother.”

I crossed the room, linked my hands together, and bowed to the woman who had brought my laotong into this world.

“You must forgive our circumstances,” Snow Flower’s mother said. “I can only offer you tea.” She rose. “You girls have much to talk over.” With that, she swayed out of the room with the sublime grace that comes from feet perfectly bound.

When I left my natal home four days ago, tears had poured down my face. I was sad, happy, and afraid all at the same time. But now, as I sat with Snow Flower on her bed, I saw on her cheeks tears of remorse, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. I longed to yell at her, Tell me! Instead, I waited for the truth, realizing that each word from Snow Flower’s lips would cause her to lose whatever face she had left.

“Long before you and I met,” Snow Flower said at last, “my family was one of the best in the county. You can see”—she gestured around her helplessly—”this once was glorious. We were very prosperous. My great-grandfather the scholar received many mou from the emperor.”

I listened, my mind spinning.

“When the emperor died, my great-grandfather fell out of favor, so he came home to retire. Life was good. When he died, his son, my grandfather, took over. My grandfather had many workers and many servants. He had three concubines, but they gave him only daughters. My grandmother finally bore a son and secured her place. They married in my mother for that son. People said she was like Hu Yuxiu, who was so talented and charming she had attracted an emperor. My father wasn’t an imperial scholar, but he was educated in the classics. People said of him that he would one day be the headman of Tongkou. Mama believed it. Others saw a different future. My grandparents recognized in my father the weakness of having been raised as the only son in a house with too many sisters and too many concubines, while my aunt suspected that he was cowardly and susceptible to vice.”

Snow Flower’s eyes were distant as she relived a past that no longer existed. “Two years after I was born, my grandparents died,” she continued. “My family had everything—stunning clothes, plentiful food, lots of servants. My father took me on trips; my mother took me to the Temple of Gupo. I saw and learned a lot as a girl. But my father had to take care of Grandfather’s three concubines and marry out his four sisters by blood and the five half sisters who had come from the concubines. He also had to provide work, food, and shelter for the field workers and the house servants. Marriages for his sisters and half sisters were arranged. My father tried to show everyone what a big man he was. Each bride-price was more extravagant than the last. He began to sell fields to the big landowner in the west of our province so he could pay for more silk or for another pig to be slaughtered as a bride-price. My mother—you saw her—she is beautiful on the outside but inside she is much like I was before I met you: pampered, sheltered, and ignorant about women’s work other than embroidery and nu shu. My father . . .” Snow Flower hesitated, then blurted out, “My father took to the pipe.”

I remembered back to the day that Madame Gao had made such a nuisance of herself talking about Snow Flower’s family. She’d mentioned gambling and concubines but also that Snow Flower’s father had taken to the pipe. I was nine years old. I had thought he smoked too much tobacco. Now I realized not only that Snow Flower’s father had fallen victim to the opium pipe, but that everyone in the upstairs women’s chamber that day, except for me, had known exactly what Madame Gao was talking about. My mother knew, my aunt knew, Madame Wang knew. They had all known, yet every one of them had agreed that this common knowledge should not be shared with me.

“Is your father still alive?” I asked tentatively. Surely she would have told me if he’d died, but then again—given all her other lies—maybe not.

She nodded but offered nothing more.

“Is he downstairs?” I asked, thinking of the strange and disgusting smell that had pervaded the main room.

Her features went very still; then she lifted her eyebrows. I took this to mean yes.

“The turning point came with the famine,” Snow Flower resumed. “Do you remember that? We hadn’t met yet, but there was a particularly bad crop followed by a very cruel winter.”

How could I forget? The best we’d eaten was rice gruel flavored with dried turnips. Mama was frugal, Baba and Uncle barely ate, and we had survived.

“My father was not prepared,” Snow Flower admitted. “He smoked his pipe and forgot about us. One day my grandfather’s concubines left. Maybe they went back to their natal homes. Maybe they died in the snow. No one knows. By the time spring arrived, only my parents, my two brothers, my two sisters, and I lived in the house. On the surface we still had our elegant life, but in actuality the debt collectors were beginning to visit us regularly. My father sold off more fields. Finally, we had only the house. By then he cared more for his pipe than he did for us. Before he would pawn the furniture—oh, Lily, you can’t imagine how pretty everything was—he thought he would sell me.”

“Not as a servant!”

“Worse. As a little daughter-in-law.”

This had always been the most horrible thing I could imagine: not having your feet bound, being raised by strangers who had to be of such low morals that they didn’t want a proper daughter-in-law, being treated lower than a servant. And now that I was married I understood the most terrible aspect of this life. You might be nothing but a bit of bed business for any male who lived in the household.

“We were saved by my mother’s sister,” Snow Flower said. “After you and I became laotong, she arranged a so-so match for my elder sister. She does not come here anymore. Later my aunt sent my elder brother to apprentice in Shangjiangxu. Today my younger brother works in the fields for your husband’s family. My younger sister died, as you know—”

But I didn’t care about people I had never met and had only heard lies about. “What happened to you ?”

“My aunt changed my future with scissors, cloth, and alum. My father objected, but you know Auntie Wang. Who’s going to say no to her once she’s made a decision?”

“Auntie Wang?” My mind reeled. “You mean our Auntie Wang, the matchmaker?”

“She is my mother’s sister.”

I pressed my fingers to my temples. The very first day I met Snow Flower and we went to the Temple of Gupo, she had addressed the matchmaker as Auntie. I thought she’d done this out of courtesy and respect, and from then on I’d also used the honorific when I spoke to Madame Wang. I felt stupid and foolish.

“You never told me,” I said.

“About Auntie Wang? That was the one thing I thought you knew.”

The one thing I thought you knew. I tried to absorb those words.

“Auntie Wang saw right through my father,” Snow Flower went on. “She understood he was weak. She looked at me too. She read in my face that I did not like to obey, that I didn’t pay attention, that I was hopeless in the arts of home care, but that my mother could teach me embroidery, how to dress, how to act in front of a man, our secret writing. Auntie is only a woman, but as a matchmaker she is also business-minded. She saw where things were headed for our family and for me. She began looking for a laotong match, hoping it would send a good message through the countryside that I was educated, loyal, obedient—”