Lisa See - Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

At night, after the others left, I moved from the cot the family had prepared for me and into the bed next to Snow Flower. I wrapped my arms around her, trying to bring warmth to her shriveled form and alleviate the torment that so wracked her body that she whimpered even in her dreams. Each night I fell asleep wishing my hands were sponges that would absorb the growth in her belly. Each morning I woke to find her hand upon my cheek, her hollowed eyes staring at me.

For many years, Jintian’s doctor had attended to Snow Flower. Now I sent for my own. He took one look and shook his head.

“Lady Lu, a cure is not possible,” he said. “All you can do now is wait for the onset of death. You can see it already in the purple tint of her flesh just above her bindings. First, her ankles; then her legs will come next, swelling and turning the skin purple as her life force slows. Soon, I suspect, her breathing will change. You’ll recognize it. An inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Just when you think she is gone she will take another breath. Do not cry, Lady Lu. At that time the end will be very near, and she will not even be aware of her pain.”

The doctor left packets of herbs for us to brew into a medicinal tea; I paid him and vowed I would never use him again. After he left, Lotus, the eldest of the sworn sisters, tried to comfort me. “Snow Flower’s husband brought in many doctors, but one doctor, two doctors, three doctors could do nothing for her now.”

The old fury threatened to rise up in me, but I saw the sympathy and compassion in Lotus’s face, not just for Snow Flower but for me as well.

I remembered that bitter was the most yin of flavors. It caused contractions, reduced fevers, and calmed the heart and spirit. Convinced that bitter melon was something that would stall Snow Flower’s disease, I called upon her sworn sisters to help by making sauteed bitter melon with black bean sauce and bitter melon soup. The three women did as I asked. I sat on Snow Flower’s bed and fed her spoonful after spoonful. At first she ate without arguing. Then she clamped her mouth shut and looked away from me as though I weren’t there.

The middle sworn sister pulled me aside. At the top of the stairs, Willow took the bowl from my hands, and whispered, “It’s too late for this. She doesn’t want to eat. You must try to let her go.” Willow patted my face kindly. Later that day, she would be the one who cleaned up Snow Flower’s bitter-melon vomit.

My next and final plan was to bring in the diviner. He came into the room and announced, “A ghost has attached itself to your friend’s body. Do not worry. Together we will drive it from this room and she will be cured. Miss Snow Flower,” he said, bending over the bed, “here are some words for you to chant.” Then to the rest of us, he ordered, “Kneel and pray.”

So Spring Moon, Madame Wang—yes, the old matchmaker was there through most of it—the three sworn sisters, and I dropped to our knees around the bed and began praying and singing to the Goddess of Mercy, while Snow Flower’s voice weakly repeated her lines. Once the diviner saw us busy with our tasks, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, wrote some incantations on it, set it on fire, and ran back and forth across the room, trying to drive away the hungry ghost. Next he used a sword to slice through the smoke: swish, swish, swish. “Ghost out! Ghost out! Ghost out!”

But this did not help. I paid the diviner and from Snow Flower’s lattice window watched as he got into his pony-drawn cart and trotted off down the road. I vowed that from here on I would use diviners only to find propitious dates.

Plum Blossom, the third and youngest of the sworn sisters, came to stand next to me. “Snow Flower is doing everything you ask of her. But I hope you see, Lady Lu, that she only does these things for you. This torment has gone on too long. If she were a dog, would you keep her suffering so?”

Pain exists at many levels: the physical agony that Snow Flower endured, the sorrow at seeing her suffer and believing that I couldn’t bear another moment, the torturous regret I felt for the things I had said to her eight years ago—and to what purpose? To be respected by the women of my village? To hurt Snow Flower as she had hurt me? Or had it come down to my pride—that if she wouldn’t be with me, she shouldn’t be with anyone? I’d been wrong on every count, including the last one, because during those long days I saw the solace that the other women brought to Snow Flower. They had not come to her just at this final moment as I had; they had watched over her for many years. Their generosity—in the form of little bags of rice, cut vegetables, and gathered firewood—had kept her alive. Now they came every day, neglecting their duties at home. They did not crowd in on our special relationship. Instead, they hovered like benign spirits, praying, continuing to light fires to scare away ghosts eager for Snow Flower, but always leaving us to ourselves.

I must have slept, but I don’t remember it. When I wasn’t attending to Snow Flower, I was making burial shoes for her. I chose colors I knew she would love. I threaded my needle and embroidered one shoe with a lotus blossom for continual and a ladder for climbing to suggest that Snow Flower was on a continual climb to heaven. On the other, I embroidered tiny deer and curly-winged bats, symbols that meant long life—the same ones that you see on wedding garments and hang as celebratory notices at birthdays—to let Snow Flower know that, even after her death, her blood would continue through her son and her daughter.

Snow Flower deteriorated. When I had first arrived and washed and rewrapped her feet, I saw that her curled toes had already turned dark purple. As the doctor said it would, that horrible death color crept up to her calves. I tried to make Snow Flower fight the disease. In the early days I begged her to call on her horse nature to kick away those spirits who wanted to claim her. Now, I knew, all that was left was to ease her way to the afterworld as best we could.

Yonggang saw all this when she came to see me each morning, bringing fresh eggs, clean clothes, and messages from my husband. She had been obedient and loyal to me for many years, but at this time I discovered that she had once broken faith with me in a way for which I will be forever grateful. Three days before Snow Flower died, Yonggang arrived for one of her early morning visits, knelt before me, and laid a basket at my feet.

“I saw you, Lady, many years ago,” she said, her voice cracking in fear. “I knew you couldn’t mean what you were doing.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about or why she had chosen this moment to confess. Then she pulled the cloth from the top of the basket, reached in, and took out letters, handkerchiefs, embroideries, and Snow Flower and my secret fan. These were things I’d looked for when I was burning our past, but this servant had risked being thrown into the street to save them, during those days of Cutting a Disease from My Heart, and then kept them protected all these years.

Seeing this, Spring Moon and the sworn sisters scurried around the room, digging into Snow Flower’s embroidery basket, rifling through drawers, and reaching under the bed to find secret hiding places. Soon I had before me all the letters I had ever written Snow Flower and everything I had ever made for her. In the end, everything—except what I had once destroyed—was there.

For the last days of Snow Flower’s life, I took us on a journey through our lives together. We had both memorized so much that we could recite whole passages, but she weakened quickly and spent the rest of the time just holding my hand and listening.

At night, in bed together under the lattice window, the moonlight bathing us, we were transported back to our hair-pinning days. I wrote nu shu characters on her palm. The bed is lit by moonlight. . . .