Lisa See - Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

“Lady Lu, only you can help me,” the girl implored, as she shuffled her crumpled form toward me until her forehead rested on my lily feet.

I reached down and touched her shoulder. “Give me your bowl and I’ll fill it.”

“I have no beggar’s bowl and I don’t need food.”

“Then why are you here?”

The girl began to weep. I asked her to rise and when she didn’t I tapped her shoulder again. Next to me, Yonggang stared at the floor.

“Get up!” I ordered.

The girl lifted her head and looked up into my face. I would have recognized her anywhere. Snow Flower’s daughter looked exactly like her mother at that age. Her hair fought against the restriction of her pins and fell in loose tendrils about her face, which was as pale and clear as the spring moon she was named for. I wistfully remembered this girl before she was born. Through the mists of memory I saw Spring Moon as a beautiful baby, then during those terrible days and nights of our Taiping winter. Once this pretty little thing would have been my daughter’s laotong. Now here she was, her forehead dropping back to my feet, begging for my help.

“My mother is very sick. She will not last the winter. We can do nothing for her now except settle her fretful mind. Please come to her. She calls out to you. Only you can answer.”

Even five years earlier the depth of my pain would have still been so great that I might have sent the girl on her way, but I had learned a lot in my duties as Lady Lu. I could never forgive Snow Flower for all the sadness she had caused me, but for my own position in the county I had to show my face as a gracious lady. I told Spring Moon to go home and promised that I would arrive there shortly; then I arranged for a palanquin to take me to Jintian. Riding there, I buttressed myself against seeing Snow Flower and the butcher, their son, who I realized must have married in by now, and, of course, the sworn sisters.

The palanquin set me down before Snow Flower’s threshold. The place had not changed. A pile of wood rested against the side of the house. The platform with its embedded wok waited for fresh kill. I hesitated, taking it all in. The butcher’s form loomed in the dark doorway, and then he was before me—older, stringier, but the same in so many ways.

“I cannot bear to see her suffer” were the first words he spoke to me after eight years. He roughly wiped the dampness at his eyes with the back of his hand. “She gave me a son, who has helped me do better at my business. She gave me a good and useful daughter. She made my house more beautiful. She cared for my mother until she died. She did everything a wife should do, but I was cruel to her, Lady Lu. I see that now.” Then he brushed past me, adding, “She is better off in the company of women.” I watched him stalk toward the fields, the one place where a man can be alone with his emotions.

It is hard for me to think about this even after all these years. I thought I had erased Snow Flower from my memory and cut her from my heart. I had truly believed I would never forgive her for loving sworn sisters more than me, but the moment I saw Snow Flower on her bed, all those thoughts and emotions fell away. Time —life— had brutalized her. I stood there, an older woman, true, but my skin was still smooth from creams, powders, and nearly a decade protected from the sun, while my clothes spoke to the whole county about the person I was. In the bed across the room lay Snow Flower, an aged crone dressed in rags. Unlike her daughter, whose face had been immediately familiar to me, I would not have recognized Snow Flower if I had seen her on the street outside the Temple of Gupo.

And yes, the other women were there—Lotus, Willow, and Plum Blossom. As I suspected all those years ago, Snow Flower’s sworn sisters were the women who’d lived with us under the tree in the mountains. We did not exchange greetings.

As I approached the bed, Spring Moon rose and stepped aside. Snow Flower’s eyes were closed and her skin was deathly pale. I looked at her daughter, unsure of what to do. The girl nodded and I took Snow Flower’s cold hand in my own. She stirred without opening her eyes, then licked her cracked lips.

“I feel . . .” She shook her head as though trying to rid her mind of a thought.

I called her name softly, then gently squeezed her fingers.

My laotong ‘s eyes blinked open and she tried to focus, at first not believing who was before her. “I felt your touch,” she murmured at last. “I knew it was you.” Her voice was weak, but when she spoke, the years of pain and horror fell away. Behind the ravages of disease, I saw and heard the little girl who invited me to become her laotong all those years ago.

“I heard you call for me,” I lied. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I was waiting.”

Her face contorted in anguish. Her other hand clutched her stomach and she pulled up her legs reflexively. Snow Flower’s daughter wordlessly dipped a cloth into a bowl of water, wrung it out, and handed it to me. I took it and wiped away the sweat that had collected on Snow Flower’s forehead during the spasm.

Through her agony she spoke. “I’m sorry for everything, but you should know I never wavered in my love for you.”

As I accepted her apology, another spasm hit, this one worse than the first. Her eyes shut against the pain, and she did not speak again. I refreshed the cloth and put it back on her forehead; then I once again took her hand and sat with her until the sun went down. By that time, the other women had left and Spring Moon had gone downstairs to make dinner. Alone with Snow Flower, I pulled back her quilt. Her disease had eaten the flesh around her bones and fed it to a tumor that had grown to the size of a baby inside her belly.

Even now I can’t explain my emotions. I had been hurt and angry for so long. I thought I would never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled with the realization that my laotong ‘s womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor inside her must have been growing for many years. I had a duty to care. . . .

No! That’s not it. The whole time I was hurt it was because I still loved Snow Flower. She was the only one ever who saw my weaknesses and loved me in spite of them. And I had loved her even when I hated her most.

I tucked the quilt back around her and began plotting. I had to get a proper doctor. Snow Flower should eat, and we needed a diviner. I wanted her to fight as I would fight. You see, I still didn’t understand that you cannot control the manifestations of love, nor can you change another person’s destiny.

I lifted Snow Flower’s cold hand to my lips; then I went downstairs. The butcher slouched at the table. Snow Flower’s son, a grown man now, stood next to his sister. They looked at me with expressions that came directly from their mother—proud, enduring, long-suffering, beseeching.

“I’m going home now,” I announced. Snow Flower’s son’s face crumpled in disappointment, but I held up my hand placatingly. “I will be back tomorrow. Please arrange a place for me to sleep. I will not leave this place until . . .” I couldn’t go on.

I thought that once I settled in we would win this battle, but two weeks were all we had. Two weeks out of what would turn out to be my eighty years to show Snow Flower all the love I felt for her. Not once did I leave that room. Whatever went into my body, Snow Flower’s daughter brought. Whatever went out of my body, Snow Flower’s daughter took away. Every day I washed Snow Flower, then used the same water to wash myself. A shared bowl of water many years before was how I knew Snow Flower loved me. Now I hoped she would see my actions, remember the past, and know that nothing had changed.