Lisa See - Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

“What did I write?” I asked. “Tell me the characters.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t tell. . . .”

So I recited the poem and watched as tears dripped from the edges of Snow Flower’s eyes, ran down her temples, and lost themselves in her ears.

During the last conversation we had, she asked, “Could you do one thing for me?”

“Anything,” I said, and I meant it.

“Please be an aunt to my children.”

I promised that I would.

Nothing helped or relieved Snow Flower’s suffering. In the final hours, I read her our contract, reminding her how we had gone to the Temple of Gupo and bought the red paper, sat down together, and composed the words. I read again the letters we had sent each other. I read happy parts from our fan. I hummed old melodies from our childhood. I told her how much I loved her and said I hoped she would be waiting for me in the afterworld. I talked her all the way to the edge of the sky, not wanting her to go yet yearning to release her into the clouds.

Snow Flower’s skin went from ghostly white to golden. A lifetime of worries melted from her face. The sworn sisters, Spring Moon, Madame Wang, and I listened to Snow Flower’s breathing: an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. Seconds passed; then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. More excruciating seconds, then an inhale, an exhale, then nothing. The whole time I kept my hand on Snow Flower’s cheek, as she had done for me throughout our entire lives together, letting her know that her laotong was there until that final inhale, exhale, and then truly nothing.

SO MUCH OF what happened reminded me of the didactic story that Aunt used to chant about the girl who had three brothers. I now understand that we learned those songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.

Snow Flower was carried down to the main room. I washed her and dressed her in her eternity clothes—all of them ragged and faded, but in patterns I remembered from our childhood. The oldest sworn sister combed Snow Flower’s hair. The middle sworn sister patted Snow Flower’s face with powder and painted her lips. The youngest sworn sister decorated her hair with flowers. Snow Flower’s body was placed in a coffin. A small band came to play mourning music as we sat next to her in the main room. The oldest sworn sister had enough money to buy incense to burn. The middle sworn sister had enough money to buy paper to burn. The youngest sworn sister had no money for incense or paper, but she did a very good job crying.

Three days later, the butcher, his son, and the husbands and sons of the sworn sisters carried the coffin to the grave site. They walked very fast, as if they were flying across the ground. I took almost all of Snow Flower’s nu shu writing, including much of what I had sent her, and burned it so she would have our words in the afterworld.

We returned to the butcher’s house. Spring Moon made tea, while the three sworn sisters and I went upstairs to clean away all signs of death.

It was through them that I learned of my greatest shame. They told me that Snow Flower was not their sworn sister. I didn’t believe it. They tried to convince me otherwise.

“But the fan?” I cried out in frustration. “She wrote that she was joining you.”

“No,” Lotus corrected. “She wrote that she didn’t want you to worry about her anymore, that she had friends here to console her.”

They asked if they could see the words for themselves. Snow Flower, I learned, had taught these women how to read nu shu. Now they crowded over the fan like a gaggle of hens, exclaiming and pointing out to one another hallmarks that Snow Flower had told them about over the years. But when they came to the last entry, they turned serious.

“Look,” Lotus said, pointing to the characters. “There is nothing here about her becoming our sworn sister.”

I snatched the fan away and took it to a corner where I could examine it myself. I have too many troubles, Snow Flower had written. I cannot be what you wish. You won’t have to listen to my complaints anymore. Three sworn sisters have promised to love me as I am—

“You see, Lady Lu?” Lotus said to me from across the room. “Snow Flower wanted us to listen to her. In exchange she taught us the secret language. She was our teacher, and we respected and loved her for that. But she didn’t love us, she loved you. She wanted that love returned, unburdened by your pity and your impatience.”

That I had been shallow, stubborn, and selfish did not alter the gravity and stupidity of what I had done. I had made the greatest mistake for a woman literate in nu shu: I had not considered texture, context, and shades of meaning. More than that, my belief in my own self-importance had made me forget what I had learned on the first day I’d met Snow Flower: She was always more subtle and sophisticated in her words than this mere second daughter of a common farmer. For eight years, Snow Flower had suffered because of my blindness and ignorance. For the rest of my life—which has been nearly as many years as Snow Flower was when she died—I have lived with the regret.

But they were not done with me.

“She tried to please you in every way,” Lotus said, “even by doing bed business with her husband too soon after giving birth.”

“ That’s not true!”

“Every time she lost a baby, you offered no more sympathy than her husband or mother-in-law,” Willow went on. “You always said that her only worth was from giving birth to sons, and she believed you. You told her to try again, and she obeyed.”

“This is what we are supposed to say,” I answered indignantly. “This is how we women give comfort—”

“But do you think those words were a consolation when she had lost another baby?”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t hear—”

“Try again! Try again! Try again!” Plum Blossom taunted. “Can you deny you said these things?”

I couldn’t.

“You demanded that she follow your advice on this and many other things,” Lotus picked up. “Then when she did, you criticized her—”

“You’re changing my meaning.”

“Are we?” Willow asked. “She talked about you all the time. She never said a bad word against you, but we heard the truth of what happened.”

“She loved you as a laotong should for everything that you were and everything you were not,” Plum Blossom concluded. “But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men’s rules.”

Finished with one cycle, Lotus began another.

“Do you remember when we were in the mountains and she lost the baby?” she asked, in a tone that made me dread what was coming.

“Of course I remember.”

“She was already sick.”

“That’s not possible. The butcher—”

“Maybe her husband brought it on that day,” Willow admitted. “But the blood that burst from her body was black, stagnant, dying, and none of us saw a baby in that mess.”

Again, Plum Blossom finished. “We were here with her for many years, and this thing happened several more times. She was already quite sick when you sang your Letter of Vituperation.”

I hadn’t been able to argue successfully with them before. How could I argue this point now? The tumor had to have been growing for a very long time. Other things from back then fell into place: Snow Flower’s loss of appetite, her skin going so pale, and her loss of energy at the very moment when I was nagging her to eat better, pinch her cheeks to lure in more color, and do all of her expected chores to bring harmony to her husband’s home. And then I remembered that just two weeks back when I’d first arrived in this house, she’d apologized. I hadn’t done the same—not even when she was in her worst pain, not even when her death was imminent, not even when I was smugly telling myself I still loved her. Her heart had always been pure, but mine had been as shriveled, hard, and dry as an old walnut.