Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

by Lisa See

  Many years had passed since Snow Flower lost her first daughter. Then, I hadn’t been able to understand her grief. But by now I’d experienced more of life’s miseries and saw things very differently. If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband’s family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. In the case of sons, we prepare them to take their first steps into the men’s realm. In the case of daughters, we bind their feet, teach them our secret writing, and train them to be good wives, daughters-in-laws, and mothers, so they will fit into the upstairs chambers of their new homes. But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn’t she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?

  “Every day I come to the same conclusion,” Snow Flower admitted, as she looked out over the deep valley below. “But then your aunt comes into my mind. Lily, think how she suffered and how little we cared for her suffering.”

  I responded with the truth. “She hurt terribly, but I think we were a comfort to her.”

  “Remember how sweet Beautiful Moon was? Remember how demure she was even in death? Remember when your aunt came home and stood over her body? We’d all been concerned about her feelings, so we wrapped Beautiful Moon’s face. Your aunt never saw her daughter again. Why were we so cruel?”

  I could have said that Beautiful Moon’s corpse was too horrible a memory to place in a mother’s mind. Instead, I said, “We will visit Aunt at the first chance. She will be happy to see us.”

  “You perhaps,” Snow Flower said, “but not me. I remind her too much of herself. But know this. She reminds me every day to endure.” She thrust her chin forward, took one last look out across the misty hills, and said, “I think we should go back. I can see you are cold. And besides, there’s something I want you to help me write.” She reached into her tunic and pulled out our fan. “I brought it with me. I was afraid the rebels might burn my house and it would be lost.” Her eyes stared into mine. She was fully back now. She let out her breath and shook her head. “I said I’d never again lie to you. The truth is, I thought we’d die up here. I didn’t want us to be without it.”

  She pulled on my arm.

  “Come away from the edge, Lily. Seeing you stand there like that scares me.”

  We walked back to our camp, where we improvised ink and a brush. We took two half-burned logs from the fire and let them cool; then we scraped at the charred parts with rocks, carefully preserving what came off. This we mixed with water in which we boiled some roots. It wasn’t as black or opaque as ink, but it would work well enough. Then we loosened the edge of a basket, extracted a length of bamboo, and sharpened it as best we could. This we used for our brush. We took turns recording in our secret language our journey here, the loss of Snow Flower’s little boy and unborn baby, the cold nights, and the blessings of friendship. When we were done, Snow Flower gently closed the fan and tucked it back inside her tunic.

  That night the butcher did not beat my laotong. Instead he wanted and got bed business. Afterward she came to my side of the fire, slipped under her wedding quilt, curled up beside me, and rested her palm on my face. She was tired from so many sleepless nights and I felt her body soften quickly. Just before she drifted off, she whispered, “He loves me as best he can. Everything will be better now. You’ll see. He has had a change of heart.” And I thought, Yes, until the next time he throws his grief or his anger into the loving person beside me.

  THE NEXT DAY

  we received word it was safe to return to our villages. After three months in the mountains, I’d like to say we’d seen the last of death. We had not. We had to pass all those who’d been left behind during our escape. We saw men, women, children, babies—all badly decomposed from exposure to the elements, from animal feasts, and from the natural decomposition of flesh. White bones flashed at us in the bright sunlight. Garments brought back instant identification, and too often we heard cries of recognition and remorse.

  If all this were not enough, many of us were so weak that death was inevitable—now, at this last stage, when we were almost home. Mostly it was women who died on the way down the mountain. Balancing on our lily feet, we were top-heavy. We were pulled toward the abyss that fell away to our right. This time, in daylight, we not only heard the screams but saw the flapping of women’s arms as they futilely fought the air. A day earlier, I would have worried for Snow Flower, but her face was set in concentration as she carefully placed one foot after the other before her.

  The butcher carried his mother on his back. Once, when Snow Flower faltered, drawing back uncertainly at the sight of a mother wrapping the decayed remains of a child to take home for a proper burial, he stopped, set his mother down, and took Snow Flower’s elbow. “Please keep walking,” he pleaded with her softly. “We will be at our cart soon. You will ride the rest of the way back to Jintian.” When she refused to tear her eyes away from the mother and her child, he added, “I will come back in the spring and bring his bones home. I promise we will have him nearby.”

  Snow Flower straightened her shoulders and forced herself to step reluctantly around the woman with her tiny bundle.

  The hand-drawn cart was no longer where we’d left it. This and so many things that had been discarded three months ago had been taken, either by the rebels or by the Great Hunan Army. But as the land flattened we were drawn to our homes, forgetting our aching, bleeding, starving bodies. Jintian was unscathed, as far as I could tell. I helped the butcher’s mother into the house and went back outside. I wanted to go home. I had come so far that I knew I could walk the last few li to Tongkou, but the butcher ran to tell my husband I was back and to come and get me.

  As soon as he set off, Snow Flower grabbed me. “Come,” she said. “We don’t have much time.” She pulled me into the house, even as my eyes yearned to watch the butcher as he loped up the road to my village. When we got upstairs, she said, “Once you did me a great kindness by helping me with my dowry. Now I can repay a small portion of that debt.” She opened a trunk and pulled out a dark blue jacket with a pale blue silk panel woven in a cloud pattern on the front. That silk panel I remembered from the jacket Snow Flower had worn on the first day we met. She offered it to me. “I would be honored if you would wear this when you see your husband again.”

  I saw how terrible Snow Flower looked, but I hadn’t considered how I might appear to my husband. I had worn my lavender silk jacket with the chrysanthemum embroidery for three solid months. Not only was it filthy and torn, but looking at myself in the mirror as water heated so I could bathe, I saw three months of living in the mud and snow under an unforgiving sun at high altitude upon my face.

  I had time to wash only those places that he would see or smell first—my hands, arms, face, neck, armpits, and that place between my legs. Snow Flower did the best she could with my hair, pinning the grimy matted mass into a bun and then wrapping it in a clean headdress. Just as she helped me step into her dowry pants, we heard a pony’s hooves and the creaking wheels of a cart coming near. Quickly she buttoned me into the tunic. We stood face-to-face. She placed the palm of her hand on the square of sky-blue silk on my chest.

  “You look beautiful,” she said.

  I saw before me the person whom I loved above all others. Still, I was troubled by what she had said before we came down the mountain about my pitying her for her circumstances. I didn’t want to leave without explaining myself.

  “I never thought you were”—I struggled to find tactful words and gave up—“less than I was.”

  She smiled. My heart beat against her hand. “You said no lies.”

  Then, before I could say anything else, I heard my husband’s voice calling me. “Lily! Lily! Lily!”

  With that, I ran—yes, ran—downstairs and outside. When I saw him, I fell to my knees and put my
head at his feet, so embarrassed I was by how I must have looked and smelled. He lifted me up and enfolded me in his arms.

  “Lily, Lily, Lily . . .” My name came out muffled as he kissed me again and again, oblivious that others watched our reunion.

  “Dalang . . .” I had never before spoken his name.

  He took me by the shoulders and pushed me back so he could see my face. Tears glistened in his eyes; then he pulled me close again, crushing me to him.

  “I had to get everyone out of Tongkou,” he explained. “Then I had to see our children safely on their way. . . .”

  These actions, which I didn’t fully understand until later, were what changed my husband from the son of a good and generous headman to a much-respected headman in his own right.

  His body trembled as he added, “I looked for you many times.”

  So often in our women’s songs, we say, “I had no feelings for my husband” or “My husband had no feelings for me.” These are popular lines, used in chorus after chorus, but on that day I had deep feelings for my husband, and he for me.

  My last moments in Jintian went by in a blur. My husband paid the butcher a handsome reward. Snow Flower and I embraced. She offered me the fan to take home, but I wanted her to keep it, for her sorrow was still near and all I felt was happiness. I said goodbye to Snow Flower’s son and promised I would send him some notebooks to study men’s writing. Finally, I bent down to Snow Flower’s daughter. “I will see you very soon,” I said. Then I got on the cart and my husband flicked the reins. I looked back to Snow Flower, waved, and turned toward Tongkou—toward my home, my family, my life.

  Letter of Vituperation

  THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY PEOPLE WENT ABOUT REBUILDING

  their lives. Those of us who survived that year had experienced too much, first with the epidemic and then with the rebellion. We were depleted—emotionally, and by the numbers of those we’d lost—but grateful to be alive. Slowly we gained weight. Men went back to the fields and sons returned to the main hall for study, while women and girls retired to their upstairs rooms to embroider and weave. We all moved forward, invigorated by our good fortune.

  Sometimes in the past I had wondered about the outer realm of men. Now I vowed I would never venture into it again. My life was meant to be spent in the upstairs chamber. I was happy to see my sisters-in-law’s faces and looked forward to long afternoons spent with them in needlework, tea, song, and story. But this was nothing to how I felt upon seeing my children. Three months was forever, in their eyes and in mine. They had grown and changed. My eldest son had turned twelve while I was away. Safe in the county seat during the chaos, protected by the emperor’s troops, he had studied very hard. He had learned the supreme lesson: All scholars, no matter where they lived or what dialect they spoke, read the same texts and took the same exams so that loyalty, integrity, and a singular vision would be maintained across the realm. Even far from the capital, in remote counties like ours, local magistrates—all trained in an identical manner—helped people to understand the relationship between themselves and the emperor. If my son stayed on this track, one day he would surely sit for the examinations.

  I saw Snow Flower more that year than since we were girls. Our husbands did not try to stop us, even though the rebellion still raged in other parts of the country. After all that had happened, my husband believed I would be safe in the butcher’s care, while the butcher encouraged his wife’s visits to my home, knowing she always returned with gifts of food, books, and cash. We shared a bed in each other’s homes, while our husbands moved to other rooms to allow us time together. The butcher dared not object, following my husband’s lead in this regard. But how could they have stopped any of it—our visits, our nights together, our whispered confidences? We had no fear of sun or rain or snow. “Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.”

  Snow Flower and I continued to meet in Puwei for festivals as we always had. It was good for her to see Aunt and Uncle, whose lifetime of goodness within the family had earned them love and respect. Aunt was beloved as a grandmother to all her “grandchildren.” At the same time, Uncle was also in a better position than he had been when my father was alive. Elder Brother needed Uncle’s advice in the fields and in keeping the accounts, and Uncle was honored to give it. Aunt and Uncle had found a happy ending that no one could have imagined.

  That year when Snow Flower and I went to the Temple of Gupo, our thanks were profound and deep. We made offerings, kowtowing in thanks that we had survived the winter. Then, arm in arm, we walked to the taro stand. Sitting there, we planned our daughters’ futures and discussed the methods of footbinding that would ensure perfect golden lilies. Back in our own homes, we made bindings, purchased soothing herbs, embroidered miniature shoes to place at the altar of Guanyin, formed glutinous rice balls to present to the Tiny-Footed Maiden, and fed our daughters red-bean dumplings to soften their feet. Separately, we spoke with Madame Wang about our daughters’ match. When Snow Flower and I met again, we compared conversations, laughing at how her aunt was still the same, with her powdered face and wily ways.

  Even now, looking back at those months of spring and early summer, I see how blithely happy I was. I had my family and I had my laotong. As I said, I moved forward. This was not the case with Snow Flower. She did not regain the weight she had lost. She picked at her food—a few grains of rice, two bites of vegetable—preferring instead to drink tea. Her skin became pale again, while her cheeks refused to fill out. When she came to Tongkou and I suggested that we visit her old friends, she politely declined, saying, “They wouldn’t want to see me” or “They won’t remember me.” I nagged her until she agreed she would come with me next year to the Sitting and Singing ceremony of a Lu girl here in Tongkou, who was Snow Flower’s second cousin twice removed and my next-door neighbor.

  In the afternoons Snow Flower sat with me as I did my embroidery, but she gazed out the lattice window, her mind elsewhere. It was as though she had jumped off the cliff after all, on our last day in the mountains, and was in a soundless fall. I saw her sadness but refused to accept it. My husband warned me several times about this. “You are strong,” he said one night after Snow Flower had returned to Jintian. “You came back from the mountains and you make me more proud every day with the way you manage our household and set a good example for the women of our village. But you—and please, do not get angry with me—are blind when you look at your old same. She is not your same in every way. Maybe what happened last winter was too much for her. I do not know her well, but surely you can see she puts a brave face on a bad situation. It has taken you many years to understand this, but not every man is like your husband.”

  That he would confide this to me embarrassed me deeply. No, that’s not right. Rather, I was irritated that he dared to interfere in the inner-realm affairs of women. But I did not argue with him, because it wasn’t my place. Still, in my own mind I had to prove him wrong and myself right. So I looked more closely at Snow Flower when she next visited. I listened, really listened. Life had degenerated for Snow Flower. Her mother-in-law had cut back on her food, allowing her only one-third of the rice required for subsistence.

  “I eat only clear porridge,” she said, “but I accept it. I’m not so hungry these days.”

  Far worse, the butcher had not stopped beating her.

  “You said he wouldn’t do it again,” I protested, not wanting to believe what my husband had seen so clearly.

  “If he assaults me, what can I do? I can’t fight back.” Snow Flower sat across from me, her embroidery lying in her lap as limp and wrinkled as tofu skin.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She answered with a question of her own. “Why should I trouble you with things you cannot change?”

  “We can shift fate if we try hard enough,” I said. “I changed my life. You can too.”

  She stared at me with mouse eyes.

  “How often does it happen?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm
but frustrated that her husband was still using his fists against her, angry that she accepted it so passively, and hurt that she hadn’t confided in me—again.

  “The mountains changed him. They changed all of us. Don’t you see that?”

  “How often?” I pressed.

  “I fail my husband in many ways—”

  In other words, it happened more often than she cared to admit.

  “I want you to come and live with me,” I said.

  “Desertion is the worst thing a woman can do,” she responded. “You know that.”

  I did. For a woman it was an offense punishable by death by her husband’s hand.

  “Besides,” Snow Flower went on, “I would never leave my children. My son needs protection.”

  “But to protect him with your own body?” I asked.

  What response could she give?

  I look back now and see with the clarity of eighty years that I showed far too much impatience with Snow Flower’s despondency. In the past, whenever I had been unsure of how to react to my laotong’s unhappiness I had pressured her to follow the rules and traditions of the inner realm as a way of combating the bad things that happened in her life. This time I went further by launching a campaign for her to take control of her rooster husband, believing that as a woman born under the sign of the horse she could use her willfulness to change the situation. With only a useless daughter and an unloved first son, she should try to get pregnant again. She needed to pray more, eat the proper foods, and ask the herbalist for tonics—all to guarantee a son. If she presented her husband with what he wanted, he would remember her worth. But this was not all. . . .

  By the time the Ghost Festival arrived on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, I had peppered Snow Flower with many questions that she should have understood were suggestions for her to improve the overall situation. Why couldn’t she try to be a better wife? Why couldn’t she make her husband happy in the ways I knew she could? Why didn’t she pinch her cheeks to bring back the color? Why didn’t she eat more so she would have more energy? Why couldn’t she go home right now and kowtow to her mother-in-law, make her meals, sew for her, sing to her, do what she had to do to make that old woman happy in her old age? Why didn’t she try harder to make things right? I thought I was giving practical advice, but I had nothing like Snow Flower’s worries and concerns. Still, I was Lady Lu and I thought I was right.