by Lisa See
On the first night, we lay side by side, wearing our bindings and sleeping slippers, our inner garments, and our outer garments. We pushed our bed under the lattice window, hoping to catch a cool breeze, but there was none, just torrid stillness. The moon would be full soon. The light beams that streamed in reflected off our sweaty faces, making us feel even hotter. The next night, which was even warmer, Snow Flower suggested we shed our outer garments. “No one is here,” she said. “No one will know.” It brought relief, but we longed for something cooler.
On our third night alone together, the moon was full, and the upstairs chamber was awash in a bright blue glow. When we were sure the men were sleeping, we peeled off our outer and inner garments. We wore nothing but our bindings and our sleeping slippers. We felt air move across our bodies, but it was not a cool breeze and we were still as warm as if we were fully clothed.
“This is not enough,” Snow Flower said, stealing my thought right out of my mind.
She sat up and reached for our fan. Slowly she opened it and began to wave it back and forth over my body. As hot as the air was against my skin, it was still a luxurious feeling. But Snow Flower frowned. She closed the fan and set it aside. She searched my face, then let her eyes travel down my neck across my breasts to the flat of my stomach. I should have felt embarrassed by the way she stared, but she was my laotong, my old same. There was nothing to be ashamed of.
Looking up, I saw her bring her forefinger to her mouth. The tip of her tongue darted out. In the bright light of the full moon I saw it pink and glistening. In the most delicate gesture, she let the tip of her finger glide across that wet surface. Then she brought her finger down to my stomach. She drew a line to the left, then another in the opposite direction, followed by something like two crosses. The wetness was so cool on my skin that goose bumps rose up. I shut my eyes and let the feeling ripple through me. Then, so fast, the wetness disappeared. When I opened my eyes, Snow Flower was staring into them.
“Well?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a character,” she explained. “Tell me which one it is.”
Suddenly I understood what she’d done. She’d written a nu shu character on my stomach. We had been doing something like this for years, drawing characters in the dirt with sticks or on each other’s hands or backs with our fingers.
“I’ll do it again,” she said, “but pay attention.”
She licked her finger and it was no less a fluid movement than the first time she’d done it. As soon as that wetness touched my skin, I couldn’t help closing my eyes. The feeling made my body heavy and breathless. A stroke to the left to create a sliver of moon, another sliver below that and in reverse of the first, two strokes to the right to create the first cross, then another two strokes to the left to create the second. Again I kept my eyes closed until the momentary chill left my body. When I opened them, Snow Flower was looking down at me inquisitively.
“Bed,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said, her voice low. “Close your eyes. I will write another.”
This time she wrote the character much tighter and smaller in a spot just next to my right hip bone. This one I recognized immediately. It was a verb that meant to light.
When I said this, she brought her face down to mine and whispered in my ear, “Good.”
The next character swirled across my stomach next to the opposite hip bone.
“Moonlight,” I said. I opened my eyes. “The bed is lit by moonlight.”
She smiled at my recognition of the opening line to the Tang dynasty poem she had taught me; then we switched positions. As she had done with me, I took time to look at her body: the slenderness of her neck, the small mounds that formed her breasts, the flat expanse of her stomach that was as inviting as a new piece of silk waiting for embroidery stitches, the twin hip bones that protruded sharply, below that a triangle identical to my own, then two slim legs tapering down until they disappeared into her red silk sleeping slippers.
You have to remember that I was not yet married. I still did not know the ways of a man and wife. Only later did I learn that nothing is more intimate for a woman than her sleeping slippers and nothing is more erotic for a man than seeing the white skin of a naked woman against the bright redness of those slippers, but on that night I can tell you that my eyes lingered on them. They were Snow Flower’s summer pair. For her embroidery design she had invoked the Five Poisons—centipedes, toads, scorpions, snakes, and lizards. These were the traditional symbols used to counteract the evils brought on by summer—cholera, plague, typhoid, malaria, and typhus. Her stitches were perfect, just as her entire body was perfect.
I licked my finger and looked at the whiteness of Snow Flower’s skin. When my wet finger touched her stomach just above her belly button, I felt her intake of breath. Her breasts rose, her stomach hollowed, and goose bumps shimmered across her flesh.
“I,” she said. This was correct. I wrote the next character below her belly button. “Think,” she said. Then I followed exactly what she had done and wrote on the flesh adjacent to her right hip bone. “Light.” Now her left hip bone. “Snow.” She knew the poem, so there was no mystery to the words, just the sensations of writing and reading them. I had followed every place that she had written on my body. Now I had to find a new spot. I chose that soft place where the two sides of her ribs came together above her stomach. I knew from my own body that this area was sensitive to touch, to fear, to love. Snow Flower shivered beneath my fingertip as I wrote. “Early.”
Just two more words to finish the line. I knew what I wanted to do, but I hesitated. I let my fingertip float along the tip of my tongue. Then, emboldened by the heat, the moonlight, and the way her skin felt against my own, I let my wet finger write on one of her breasts. Her lips parted and her breath came out in a tiny moan. She did not speak the character and I did not demand one. But for my last character in the line, I lay on my side next to Snow Flower so I could see up close the way her skin would respond. I licked my finger, wrote the character, and watched her nipple tighten and pucker. We stayed completely still for a moment. Then, with her eyes still shut, Snow Flower whispered the complete phrase: “I think it is the light snow of an early winter morning.”
She rolled on her side to face me. She put her hand tenderly on my cheek as she did every night since we had begun sleeping together all those years ago. Her face glowed in the moonlight. Then she let her hand move down along my neck over my breast down to my hip. “We have two more lines.”
She sat up and I rolled onto my back. I thought I was hot these past nights, but now, naked, in the moonlight, I felt as though a fire burned inside me far hotter than anything the gods could inflict on us through the mere cycles of the seasons.
I made myself concentrate when I realized where she was planning on writing the first character. She had moved to the end of the bed and had lifted my feet onto her lap. Just on the inside of my left ankle directly above the edge of my red sleeping slipper she began to write. When she was done, she turned her attention to my right ankle. From there, she alternated from limb to limb, always staying just above the bindings. My feet—those places of so much pain and sorrow, so much pride and beauty—tingled with pleasure. We had been old sames for eight years, yet we had never been this close. The line when she was done: “Looking up, I enjoy the full moon in the night sky.”
I was eager for her to experience what I had felt. I held her golden lilies in my hands, then set them to rest on my thighs. I chose the spot that had been most exquisite for me: the shallow between the ankle bone and the tendon that rose up the back of the leg. I wrote the character, which can mean bending over, kowtowing, or prostrating oneself. On her other ankle I traced the word I.
I set her feet down and wrote a character on her calf. After this, I moved to a spot on the inside of her left thigh just above her knee. My last two characters were high up on her thighs. I leaned down to concentrate on writing the most perfect characters possible. I blew
on my strokes, knowing the sensation it would cause, and watched as the hair between her legs swayed in response.
Afterward we recited the entire poem together.
“The bed is lit by moonlight.
I think it is the light snow of an early winter morning.
Looking up, I enjoy the full moon in the night sky.
Bending over, I miss my hometown.”
We all know that poem is about a scholar who is traveling and missing his home, but on that night and forever after I believed it was about us. Snow Flower was my home, and I was hers.
Beautiful Moon
BEAUTIFUL MOON RETURNED THE NEXT DAY, AND WE GOT BACK
to work. Months ago, each of our future in-laws had Delivered the Dates for our weddings, along with the first installments of our official bride-prices—more pork and candy, as well as empty wooden boxes to fill with all the things we would make for our dowries. Finally, and, most important, they sent cloth.
I have told you that Mama and Aunt made cloth for our family, and by now Beautiful Moon and I were adept at weaving ourselves. But the word homegrown comes to mind when I think of what we created. The cotton was cultivated by Baba and Uncle, the harvest cleaned by the women in our household, the beeswax we used to create designs and the dyes for turning the fabric blue were used sparingly because we were so frugal.
Other than what we made ourselves, I could only compare my bridal cloth to that used in Snow Flower’s tunics, trousers, and headdresses, which had been constructed from beautiful fabrics and sophisticated patterns into a stylish wardrobe. One of my favorite outfits she wore in those days was made from indigo cloth. The intricate design of the indigo and the cut of the jacket were better than anything the married women in Puwei owned or made. Still, Snow Flower wore it with ease until it started to fade and fray. What I’m trying to say is that the cloth and its cut inspired me. I wanted to make clothes for myself that would be suitable for everyday wear in Tongkou.
But the cotton my in-laws sent as part of my bride-price changed all my perceptions. It was soft, without seeds, with complex designs, and dyed in the rich deep indigo so prized by the Yao people. With that gift I realized I still had much to learn and accomplish, but even this cotton was nothing compared to the silk. What arrived for me was not only of fine quality but perfect in color. Red for marriage, but also for anniversaries, New Year’s celebrations, and other festivities. Purple and green, both appropriate for a young wife. A bluish gray the color of the sky before a storm and a bluish green the color of a village pond in summer for my years as a matron and later a widow. Black and dark blue for the men in my new home. Some of the silks were plain, while others had been woven to include double-happiness, peony, or cloud patterns.
The rolls of silk and cotton my in-laws sent were not given to me to do with as I pleased. They were to be used in preparing my dowry, just as Beautiful Moon and Snow Flower had to use their gifts to build their dowries. We had to make enough quilts, pillowcases, shoes, and clothes to last a lifetime, since Yao nationality women believe they should never take anything from their in-laws. Quilts! Let me tell you about those. They are boring and hot to make. However, since everyone believes that the more quilts you bring with you to your in-laws’ house, the more children you will have, we made as many as possible.
What we loved to make were shoes. We made them for our husbands, our mothers-in-law, our fathers-in-law, and anyone else who lived in our new home, including brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, and all children. (I was lucky; my husband was the eldest son. He had three younger brothers only. Men’s shoes were not ornate, so I could do them quickly. Beautiful Moon had a greater burden. Her new home had one son, plus his parents, five sisters, an aunt, an uncle, and their three children.) We girls also made sixteen pairs for ourselves, four pairs for each of the four seasons. These more than the other things we made would be highly scrutinized, but we were happy with that knowledge because we gave each and every pair the greatest care possible, from creating the soles to the final embroidery stitch. Shoemaking allowed us to display our technical as well as our artistic skills, but it also sent a joyful and optimistic message. In our dialect, the word for shoe sounds the same as the word for child. Just as with the quilts, the more shoes we made, the more children we would have. The difference is that shoemaking requires delicacy, while quiltmaking is a heavy chore. Because three girls worked side by side, we competed in the friendliest way to compose the most beautiful designs on the outside of each pair of shoes, while giving great strength and support to the inside.
Our future families had sent patterns for their feet. We had not met our husbands and did not know if they were tall or pockmarked, but we knew the size of their feet. We were young girls—romantic as anyone of that age—and we imagined all kinds of things about our husbands from those patterns. Some turned out to be true. Most were not.
We used the patterns to cut pieces of cotton cloth, then glued together three layers of those footprints at a time. We made several sets of these and set them on the windowsill to dry. During Catching Cool Breezes, they dried very quickly. Once dry, we took those layered forms, stacked three together, and sewed them into a thick and sturdy sole. Most people do a simple repeat pattern that looks like rice seeds, but we wanted to impress our new families so we stitched different designs: a butterfly spreading its wings for a husband, a chrysanthemum in bloom for a mother-in-law, a cricket on a branch for a father-in-law. All that work just for the soles, but we saw these as messages to the people we hoped would love us when we married in.
As I said, it was unbearably hot that year during Catching Cool Breezes. We sweltered in the upstairs chamber. Downstairs was only slightly better. We drank tea, hoping it would refresh our bodies, but even in our lightest summer jackets and trousers we suffered. So we talked often about cool memories from our childhoods. I spoke of putting my feet in the river. Beautiful Moon remembered running through the fields during late autumn when the air was crisp against her cheeks. Snow Flower had once traveled north with her father and had experienced the frigid wind that blew in from Mongolia. These things did not soothe us. They were a torment.
Baba and Uncle took pity on us. They knew more than we did how cruel the weather was. They worked in it every day under the brutal sun. But we were poor. We didn’t have an inner courtyard to lounge in, or land where we could be carried by bearers to sit under the shade of a tree, or any place where we would be completely shielded from the eyes of strangers. Instead, Baba took some of Mama’s cloth and with Uncle’s help strung a canopy for us on the north side of the house. Then they laid some padded winter quilts on the ground so we might have something soft to sit on.
“The men are in the fields during the day,” Baba said. “They will not see you. Until the weather changes, you girls may do your work here. Just don’t tell your mothers.”
Beautiful Moon was accustomed to walking to her sworn sisters’ houses for embroidery sessions and the like, but I had not been outdoors in Puwei like this since my milk years. Sure, I had stepped from our threshold into Madame Wang’s palanquin and had picked vegetables in our home garden. But beyond that, I was allowed only to look down from the lattice window to the alley that passed by our house. I had not felt the rhythm of the village for too long.
We were gloriously happy—still hot, but happy. As we sat in the shade, actually catching a cool breeze as the festival promised, we embroidered the tops of shoes or did final construction. Beautiful Moon’s stitches were concentrated on her red wedding slippers, the most precious of all shoes. Pink and white lotus flowers bloomed, symbolizing her purity and fruitfulness. Snow Flower had just finished a pair in sky-blue silk with a cloud pattern for her mother-in-law, and they sat next to us on the quilt looking dainty and elegant, a gentle reminder of the high-quality work we should insist on for all our projects. They filled me with happiness, bringing to mind the jacket that Snow Flower had worn on the first day we’d met. But nostalgic thoughts didn’t seem t
o interest Snow Flower; she had simply moved on to a pair for herself, which employed purple silk trimmed with white. When the characters for purple and white were written together they meant a lot of children. As was so common with Snow Flower, her embroidery embellishments called upon the sky for inspiration. This time birds and other flying creatures twisted and soared on the tiny swatches. Meanwhile, I was finishing a pair of shoes for my mother-in-law. Her shoe size was slightly larger than my own, and it filled me with pride to know that, based solely on my feet, she would have to consider me worthy of her son. I had not yet met my mother-in-law, so I did not know her likes and dislikes, but during the heat of those days I thought of nothing but coolness. My design wrapped around the shoe, creating a landscape of women taking their ease under willow trees beside a stream. It was a fantasy, but no more so than the mythical birds that adorned Snow Flower’s shoes.
We made a pretty picture sitting there on those quilts with our legs tucked under us just so: three young maidens, all betrothed to good families, cheerfully working on our dowries, showing our good manners to those who visited. Small boys stopped to talk to us as they set out to collect firewood or took the family water buffalo to the river. Little girls in charge of their siblings let us hold their baby brothers or sisters. We imagined what it would be like to care for babies of our own. Old widows, whose status and comportment were secure, swayed up to us to gossip, examine our embroidery, and remark on our pale skin.
On the fifth day, Madame Gao paid a visit. She had just returned from Getan Village, where she was negotiating a match. While she was there, she had delivered a set of letters from us to Elder Sister and had picked up a letter from Elder Sister to us. None of us liked Madame Gao, but we had been raised to respect our elders. We offered tea, but she declined. Since there was no money to be made from us, she handed the letter to me and got back into her palanquin. We watched until it turned the corner; then I used my embroidery needle to slice open the rice-paste seal. Because of what happened later that day, and because Elder Sister used so many standard nu shu phrases, I think I can reconstruct most of what she wrote:
