Lisa See - Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

My throat closed in on itself and the tears I’d been holding back escaped from my eyes. For a moment I thought I couldn’t go on. I shifted away from my own pain and tried to bring this back to something all the women in the room would understand. “We might expect this loss of affection from our husbands—they have a right, and we are only women—but to endure this from another woman, who by her very sex has experienced much cruelty just by living, is merciless.”

I went on, reminding my neighbors of my status, of my husband who had brought salt to the village, and of the way he had made sure that all of the people of Tongkou were transported to safety during the rebellion.

“My doorstep is clean,” I declared, then turned to Snow Flower. “But what about yours?”

At that moment, an untapped spring of anger came bubbling to the surface, and not one woman in that room stopped me from expressing it. The words I used came from such a dark and bitter place that I felt as though I’d been sliced open with a knife. I knew everything about Snow Flower, and I proceeded to use it against her under the guise of social correctness and the strength of my being Lady Lu. I humiliated her in front of the other women, revealing every weakness. I held nothing back, because I had lost all control. Unbidden, a long-ago memory came to me of my younger sister’s leg flailing and her loose bindings twirling around her. With each invective I threw out, I felt as though my bindings had come loose and I was finally free to say what I really thought. It took me many years to realize that my perceptions at this time were completely wrong. The bindings weren’t flying through the air and slapping at my laotong. Rather, they were whirling tighter and tighter around me, trying to squeeze away the deep-heart love I’d longed for my entire life.

“This woman who was your neighbor took with her a dowry that was made from her mother’s dowry, so that when that poor woman went out onto the street she had no quilts or clothes to keep her warm,” I proclaimed. “This woman who was your neighbor does not keep a clean house. Her husband carries on a polluted business, killing pigs on a platform outside her front door. This woman who was your neighbor had many talents, but she squandered them, refusing to teach the women in her husband’s household our secret language. This woman who was your neighbor lied about her circumstances as a girl in her daughter days, lied as a young woman in her hair-pinning days, and continues to lie as a wife and mother in her rice-and-salt days. She has lied not only to all of you but to her laotong as well.”

I paused, gauging the women’s faces around me. “How does she spend her time? I’ll tell you how! Her lust! Animals go into heat seasonally, but this woman is always in heat. Her rutting causes the whole household to go silent. When we were in the mountains running from the rebels”—I rocked forward and the others leaned toward me—”she did bed business with her husband rather than be with me—her laotong. She says she must have done bad deeds in a former life, but I, as Lady Lu, tell you that her bad deeds in this life made her fate.”

Snow Flower sat across from me, tears running down her cheeks, but I was so desolate and confused that I could show only my anger.

“We wrote a contract as girls,” I concluded. “You made a promise, which you broke.”

Snow Flower took a deep quivering breath. “You once asked that I always tell you the truth, but when I tell it to you, you misunderstand or you don’t like what you hear. I have found women in my village who do not look down on me. They do not criticize me. They do not expect me to be someone I am not.”

Every word she spoke reinforced everything I had suspected.

“They do not humiliate me in front of others,” Snow Flower went on. “I have embroidered with them, and we console one another when we are troubled. They do not pity me. They visit me when I have not been well. . . . I am lonely and alone. I need women to comfort me every day, not just at the times of your choosing. I need women who can hear me as I am and not how they remember me or wish me to be. I feel like a bird flying alone. I cannot find my mate. . . .”

Her soft words and gentle excuses were just what I was afraid of. I closed my eyes, trying to block my feelings. To protect myself I had to hold on to this grievance as I had with my mother. When I opened my eyes, Snow Flower had lifted herself to her feet and was delicately swaying toward the stairs. When Madame Wang did not follow her, I felt a pang of sympathy. Even her own aunt, the only one among us who made a living and survived on her wits, would not offer solace.

As Snow Flower disappeared step-by-step down the stairs, I promised myself I would never see her again.

WHEN I LOOK back on that day, I know that I failed terribly in my duties and obligations as a woman. What she had done was unforgivable, but what I said was despicable. I had let my anger, hurt, and ultimately my desire for revenge take control of my actions. Ironically, the very things that embarrassed me and that I later felt much regret over completed my passage to becoming Lady Lu. My neighbors had seen me be brave when my husband was away in Guilin. They knew how I’d cared for my mother-in-law during the epidemic and shown proper filial piety at my in-laws’ funerals. After I survived the winter in the mountains, they’d watched as I’d sent teachers to outlying villages, attended ceremonies in nearly every home in Tongkou, and generally acquitted myself well as the wife of the headman. But on that day, I truly earned the respect that came with being Lady Lu by doing what all women are supposed to do for our country but can rarely accomplish. A woman must set an example of decorum and right thinking in the inside realm. If she is successful, these things will travel from her door to the next, making not only women and children behave properly but inspiring our men to make the outside realm as safe and settled as possible so the emperor can look out from his throne and see peace. I did all that in the most public way possible by showing my neighbors that Snow Flower was a low and base woman who should not be a part of our lives. I had succeeded even as I destroyed my laotong.

My Song of Vituperation became known. It was recorded on handkerchiefs and fans. It was taught to girls as a didactic lesson and sung during the month of wedding festivities to warn brides of life’s pitfalls. In this way, Snow Flower’s disgrace spread throughout the county. As for me, all that had happened crippled me. What was the point of being Lady Lu if I didn’t have love in my life?

Into the Clouds

EIGHT YEARS PASSED. DURING THAT TIME, EMPEROR XIANFENG died, Emperor Tongzhi assumed power, and the Taiping Rebellion ended somewhere in a distant province. My first son married in and his wife got pregnant, fell into our home, and had a son—the first of many precious grandsons. My son also passed his exams to become a shengyuan district scholar. He immediately began studying to become a xiucai scholar, from the province. He did not have much time for his wife, but I think she found comfort in our upstairs chamber. She was a young woman of good learning and home skills. I liked her very much. My daughter, a girl of sixteen well into her hair-pinning days, was betrothed to the son of a rice merchant in faraway Guilin. I might never see Jade again, but this alliance would further protect our ties to the salt business. The Lu family was wealthy, well respected, and without bad fortune. I was forty-two years old, and I had done my very best to forget about Snow Flower.

On a day late in fall in the fourth year of Emperor Tongzhi’s reign, Yonggang came into the upstairs room and whispered in my ear that someone wanted to see me. I asked her to show the guest upstairs, but Yonggang’s eyes went to my daughter-in-law and daughter, who were embroidering together, and shook her head no. This was either impertinence on Yonggang’s part or something more serious. Without a word to the others, I went downstairs. As I entered the main room, a young girl in worn clothes dropped to her knees and put her forehead to the floor. Beggars like this came to my door often, for I was known to be generous.