Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

by Lisa See

  She finally gave in with warnings that this sort of thing could not happen again. “I am just a poor widow, and spending my money on two useless branches will lower my esteem in the county. Do you want to send me into poverty? Do you want me to die alone?” She said all of this in her usual abrupt manner, but actually everything was ready for us when we reached the stand. A short table had been set up, with three small barrels for seats.

  The proprietor brought out a live chicken and held it up. “I always select the best for you, Madame Wang,” Old Man Zuo said. A few minutes later, he carried out a special pot heated by coals in a bottom compartment. Broth, ginger, scallions, and the cut-up chicken we’d seen just moments before bubbled inside the bowl. A dipping sauce of chopped ginger, garlic, scallions, and hot oil was also set on the table. A platter of fresh pea greens sautéed with whole garlic cloves rounded out the meal. We ate with relish, fishing for delectable pieces of chicken with our chopsticks, chewing happily, and spitting our bones on the ground. But as wonderful as all this was, I still kept room for the taro dish that Snow Flower had mentioned earlier. Everything she said about it was true—the way the hot sugar crackled as it hit the water, the irresistible crunch and softness in my mouth.

  As I did at home, I picked up the teapot and poured tea for the three of us. When I set the pot back down, I heard Snow Flower suck in air reprovingly. I had done something wrong again, but I didn’t know what. She put her hand over mine and guided it to the teapot, so that together we could turn it so the spout no longer pointed at Madame Wang.

  “It’s rude to aim the spout at anyone,” Snow Flower said mildly.

  I should have felt ashamed. Instead, I felt only admiration for my laotong’s upbringing.

  The bearers were asleep under the palanquin’s poles when we returned, but Madame Wang’s clapping and her loud voice roused them and soon we were on our way home. For the return trip, Madame Wang let the two of us sit together, even though this upset the weight balance in the palanquin and made it harder for the bearers. I think back and see that we were so young—just two little girls giggling at nothing, sorting our embroidery thread, holding hands, sneaking peeks out the curtain when Madame Wang dozed off, and watching the world go past the window. So involved were we that this time neither of us felt the movement sickness brought about by the bearers jogging and jostling over the bumpy road.

  This was our first trip to Shexia and the Temple of Gupo. Madame Wang took us back the next year, and we made our first offerings in the temple. She would escort us there almost every year until our daughter days were over. Once Snow Flower and I married out, we met in Shexia each year if circumstances allowed, always making offerings in the temple so that we might have sons, always visiting the thread merchant so we could continue with our projects in similar color schemes, always reliving the details of our first visit, and always stopping to have Old Man Zuo’s caramelized taro at the end of the day.

  We reached Puwei at dusk. On that day I had made more than just a friend outside my natal family. I had signed a contract to be old sames with another girl. I didn’t want the day to end, but I knew it would as soon as we reached my house. I imagined myself being dropped off, then watching as the bearers carried Snow Flower down the alley, with just her fingers daring to sneak under the flapping curtain to wave a final goodbye before she disappeared around the corner. Then I learned my happiness was not yet over.

  We stopped and I got out. Madame Wang told Snow Flower to step out too. “Goodbye, girls. I will be back in a few days to retrieve Snow Flower.” She leaned out of the palanquin, pinched my old same’s cheeks, and added, “Be good. Don’t complain. Learn through your eyes and ears. Make your mother proud of you.”

  How can I explain what I felt with just the two of us standing outside my family’s threshold? I was beyond happy, but I knew what waited inside. As much as I loved my family and our home, I knew Snow Flower was accustomed to something better. And she had not brought any clothes or toiletries with her.

  Mama came out to greet us. She kissed me; then she put an arm around Snow Flower’s shoulders and guided her over the threshold into our home. While we were gone, Mama, Aunt, and Elder Sister had worked hard to tidy the main room. All trash had been removed, hanging clothes taken down, and dishes put away. Our hard-packed dirt floor had been swept and water sprinkled on it to tamp it down and make it cooler.

  Snow Flower met everyone, even Elder Brother. When dinner was served, Snow Flower dipped her chopsticks first in her cup of tea to clean them, but other than this small gesture, which showed more refinement than anyone in my family had ever seen, she did her best to hide her feelings. But already my heart knew Snow Flower too well. She was putting a smiling face on a bad situation. To my eyes, she was clearly appalled by the way we lived.

  It had been a long day and we were very tired. When it came time to go upstairs I had another sinking feeling, but the women in our household had been busy there as well. The bedclothes had been aired and all the clutter associated with our usual activities organized into orderly piles. Mama pointed out a bowl of fresh water for us to wash up, along with two sets of my clothes and one of Elder Sister’s—all freshly cleaned—for Snow Flower to wear while she was our guest. I let Snow Flower use the water bowl first, but she barely dabbed her fingers into it, suspicious, I think, that it was not pure enough. She held the sleeping garment I gave her away from her body with two fingers, scrutinizing it as though it might be a rotting fish instead of Elder Sister’s newest piece of clothing. She looked around, saw our eyes on her, and then, without a word, stripped and put on the garment. We climbed into bed. Tonight, and for all future nights when Snow Flower came to stay, Elder Sister would sleep with Beautiful Moon.

  Mama said good night to the two of us. Then she leaned down, kissed me, and whispered in my ear, “Madame Wang told us what we needed to do. Be happy, little one, be happy.”

  So there we were, the two of us side by side with a light cotton quilt over us. We were such little girls, but as tired as we were we couldn’t stop whispering. Snow Flower asked about my family. I asked about hers. I told her how Third Sister had died. She told me that her third sister had died from a coughing disease. She asked about our village and I told her that Puwei meant Common Beauty Village in our local dialect. She explained that Tongkou meant Wood Mouth Village, and that when I visited her I would see why this was so.

  Moonlight came in through the lattice window, illuminating Snow Flower’s face. Elder Sister and Beautiful Moon fell asleep, but still Snow Flower and I talked. As women, we are told never to discuss our bound feet, that it is improper and unladylike, and that such conversation only inflames the passions of men. But we were girls and still in the process of our footbinding. These things were not memories, like they are for me now, but pain and suffering we were living at that time. Snow Flower talked about how she had hidden from her mother and begged her father to have mercy on her. Her father had almost given in, which would have consigned Snow Flower to the life of an old maid in her parents’ home or a servant in someone else’s.

  “But when my father started smoking his pipe,” Snow Flower explained, “he forgot his promise to me. With his mind far away, my mother and aunt took me upstairs and tied me to a chair. This is why I, like you, am a year late in my footbinding.” This didn’t mean—once her fate had been sealed—that she embraced it. No, she struggled against everything in her early months, even tearing off her bindings completely one time. “My mother bound my feet—and me to the chair—even tighter the next time.”

  “You can’t fight your fate,” I said. “It is predestined.”

  “My mother says the same thing,” Snow Flower responded. “She untied me only to walk to break my bones and to let me use the chamber pot. All the time, I looked out our lattice window. I watched the birds fly by. I followed the clouds on their travels. I studied the moon as it grew larger, then shrank. So much happened outside my window that I almost forgot what was happening
inside that room.”

  How these sentiments scared me! Snow Flower had the true independent streak of the horse sign, only her horse had wings that carried her far above the earth, while mine had a plodding nature. But a feeling in the pit of my stomach—of something naughty, of pushing against the boundaries of our preordained lives—gave me an internal thrill that in time would become a deep craving.

  Snow Flower snuggled close to me so that we were face-to-face. She put her hand on my cheek and said, “I am happy we are old sames.” Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  Lying next to her, looking at her face in the moonlight, feeling the delicate weight of her small hand on my cheek, listening to her breathing deepen, I wondered how could I make her love me the way I longed to be loved.

  Love

  WE WOMEN ARE EXPECTED TO LOVE OUR CHILDREN AS SOON

  as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt the dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were sour? We may love our daughters with all our hearts, but we must train them through pain. We love our sons most of all, but we can never be a part of their world, the outer realm of men. We are expected to love our husbands from the day of Contracting a Kin, though we will not see their faces for another six years. We are told to love our in-laws, but we enter those families as strangers, as the lowest person in the household, just one step on the ladder above a servant. We are ordered to love and honor our husbands’ ancestors, so we perform the proper duties, even if our hearts quietly call out gratitude to our natal ancestors. We love our parents because they take care of us, but we are considered worthless branches on the family tree. We drain the family resources. We are raised by one family for another. As happy as we are in our natal families, we all know that parting is inevitable. So we love our families, but we understand that this love will end in the sadness of departure. All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality.

  But the love between a pair of old sames is something completely different. As Madame Wang said, a laotong relationship is made by choice. While it’s true that Snow Flower and I didn’t mean all the words we’d written to each other in our initial contact through the fan, when we first looked in each other’s eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us—like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love—true-heart love—must grow. Back then I didn’t yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the river with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow—through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now! Waaa! I knew so little about life, but I knew enough to think like a farmer.

  So, as a girl, I prepared my earth—getting a piece of paper from Baba or asking Elder Sister for a tiny scrap of her dowry cloth—on which to plant. My seeds were the nu shu characters I composed. Madame Wang became my irrigation ditch. When she stopped by to see how my feet were progressing, I gave her my missive—in the form of a letter, a piece of weaving, or an embroidered handkerchief—and she delivered it to Snow Flower.

  Nothing can grow without the sun—the one thing completely outside the farmer’s control. I came to believe that Snow Flower filled that role. For me, sunshine came in the form of her answers to my nu shu letters. When I received something from Snow Flower, all of us gathered to decipher the meaning, for she already used words and images that challenged Aunt’s knowledge.

  I wrote little-girl things: I am fine. How are you? She might respond: Two birds balance on the top branches of a tree. Together they fly into the sky. I might write: Today Mama taught me how to make sticky rice wrapped in taro leaf. Snow Flower might write back: Today I looked out my lattice window. I thought of the phoenix rising to find a companion, and then I thought of you. I might write: A lucky date has been chosen for Elder Sister’s wedding. She might write back: Your sister is now in the second stage of her many marriage traditions. Happily, she will be with you for a few more years. I might write: I want to learn everything. You are smart. Can I be your student? She might write back: I am learning from you too. This is what makes us a pair of mandarin ducks nesting together. I might write: My meanings are not deep and my writing crude, but I wish you were here and we could whisper together at night. Her response: Two nightingales sing in the darkness.

  Her words both frightened and exhilarated me. She was clever. She had much more learning than I did. But this was not the scary part. In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.

  Except for the initial delivery of the fan, Snow Flower never sent anything to me without my sending something to her first. This did not bother me. I was coaxing her. I was watering her with my letters, and she always reacted by giving me a new shoot or a new bloom. But one obstacle confounded me. I wanted to see her again. She needed to invite me to her home, but an invitation did not come.

  One day Madame Wang came to visit, this time bringing the fan. I did not open it in one motion. Instead I clicked open only the first three folds, revealing her first message to me, my response next to it, and now a new communication next to that:

  If your family agrees, I would like to come to you in the eleventh month. We will sit together, thread our needles, chose our colors, and talk in whispers.

  In the garland of leaves, she had added another delicate flower.

  On the chosen day I waited by the lattice window, watching for the palanquin to come around the corner. When it stopped before our threshold, I wanted to run downstairs and out onto the street to greet my laotong. This was impossible. Mama went outside and the door to the palanquin swung open. Snow Flower stepped down onto the street. She wore the same sky-blue jacket with the cloud pattern. In time I came to think of it as her traveling tunic and believed she wore it for every visit so as not to embarrass my family for our lack.

  She had brought neither food nor clothes with her, as was the custom. Madame Wang offered the same admonition she had given Snow Flower the last time. She should be good, not complain, learn through her eyes and ears, and make her mother proud. Snow Flower answered, “Yes, Auntie,” but I could tell she wasn’t listening, because she was standing on the street, staring straight up to the lattice window, searching the shadows for my face.

  Mama carried Snow Flower upstairs, and from the minute her feet hit the floor of the women’s chamber she couldn’t stop talking. She chatted, whispered, teased, confided, consoled, admired. She was not the girl who upset me with her thoughts of flying away. She just wanted to play, have fun, giggle, and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about little-girl things.

  I had told her I wanted to be her student, so she started that day to teach me things from The Women’s Classic, like never to show my teeth when I smiled or raise my voice when talking to a man. But she had written that she wanted to be my student too, so she asked me to show her how to make those sticky rice cakes. She also asked strange questions about hauling water and making pig feed. I laughed because every girl knows those things. Snow Flower swore she didn’t. I decided she was teasing me. She insisted she really was ignorant. Then the others began goading me.

  “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t know how to haul water!” Elder Sister called out.

  “And maybe you don’t remember how to feed a pig,” Aunt added. “That learning was tossed out with your old shoes.”

  This was too much and I got to my feet. I was so mad, I put my fists on my hip bones and glared at th
em, but when I saw sunny faces staring back at me my anger melted and I wanted to make them even happier.

  It was quite an entertainment for everyone in the women’s chamber to watch me toddle on my still-healing feet back and forth across the room, acting out pulling water from the well and hauling it back to the house or stooping for grass and mixing it with kitchen scraps. Beautiful Moon laughed so hard she said she needed to pee. Even Elder Sister, so serious with all her dowry work, tittered into her sleeve. When I looked over at Snow Flower, her eyes were gay as she clapped her hands in delight. You see, Snow Flower was like that. She could come into the women’s chamber and with a few simple words make me do things I would never dream of doing on my own. She could be in that room—which I saw as a place of secrets, suffering, and mourning—and turn it into an oasis of bright times, good cheer, and silly fun.

  For all of her talk about speaking in a low voice to men, she babbled to Baba and Uncle during dinner, making them laugh too. Younger Brother climbed on and off Snow Flower as if he were a monkey and her lap a nest in a tree. She had so much life in her. Everywhere she went, she entranced people and made them happy. She was better than we were—anyone could see that—but she turned that into an adventure for my family. To us, she was like a rare bird that had escaped its cage and was roaming through a courtyard of common chickens. We were amused, but so was she.

  The time came for us to wash our faces before bed. I remembered the awkwardness I felt during Snow Flower’s first visit. I motioned for her to go first, but she refused. If I went first, then the water would not be clean for her alone. But when Snow Flower said, “We’ll wash our faces together,” I knew that all my common farmer’s work and willfulness had produced my desired crop. Together we bent over the basin, cupped our hands, and scooped water onto our faces. She nudged me with her elbow. I looked into the water and saw our two faces reflecting back through the ripples. Water dripped off her skin just as it dripped off mine. She giggled and splashed a little water from the basin at me. In that moment of shared water, I knew that my laotong loved me too.